How Mulching Helps Perennials in Winter
This short garden tour feature doesn’t really include an actual garden tour video. What it does contain is a video, which is really more of a brief cautionary tale, that demonstrates firsthand – with my own garden as your very own Exhibit A – how mulching helps perennials in winter look one hell of a lot better in spring.
By John G. Stamos
Short vid here, girls and boys, and it’s self-explanatory. It’s a half-baked tour of my USDA hardiness zone 5B/6A garden, which remained in a generally un-mulched state all winter (and if I’m being totally honest, for almost the entire preceeding spring, summer, and fall, too). What the vid’s going to show you is how far behind the curve so many of my garden’s late winter/early spring-emergent perennials are as a result of spending the winter without the insulating, moisture-retaining benefits of reasonable layers of planting bed mulch. If you don’t want to sit through the video, there are some decent pics, with corresponding captions, right here in the written page portion of this feature that are fairly illustrative of my “how mulching helps perennials in winter” point. The vid’s nine minutes long with, unfortunately, a total of about three minutes of me time in it – about a minute-and-a-half once at the beginning, and also once at the end. As a consolation, the vid features some pretty decent roving views of what’s doing well in RGG Land despite not being mulched, and what’s taken a beating as a result of existing in a mulch-free, unprotected state for nearly the entire preceeding year.
And what a year it was…
It was a dry summer here in Michiana Shores in 2024, and an even dryer fall, and a desiccated, dry-as-a-bone winter. Plus, it was colder than hell, and as windy as I remember it ever being. These conditions invariably compromise the health of perennials spending the whole year in the ground outdoors. They all lead to general dehydration and cold damage. Late growth and flowering in spring, accompanied by a generally yucky appearance is what’s on tap for perennial plants subjected to these conditions. And these problems are exacerbated when there’s no existing mulch layer to mitigate them. Bottom line: thermal protection and insulation, plus moisture retention and hydration are the hallmarks of how mulching helps perennials in winter.
The stills of my garden’s plants this winter are below, and in many cases, they’re accompanied, in side-by-side comparison fashion, by shots of them at the same time last year. Incidentally, the first image you’ll see immediately below is the image I’d originally planned to use as this page’s featured image (the main one at the top). I opted for a shot from the video of yours truly instead (you know, sort of a “fair warning” thing there).
You’ve seen the stills, and now only my fabled cinematography remains. The link to the vid is immediately below. Give it a click if you’re up for it.
I hope the video was tolerable and at least somewhat interesting and informative. This particular vid, unlike a number of other RGG videos (which are privately hosted and accessible right here in the digital pages of The RGG only), also happens to be an RGG YouTube Channel video, so not only can you access it right here with the above link, you can also watch it directly from the channel. In case you’re interested in watching any of the other videos on The RGG YouTube Channel, there’s a link to the channel in this site’s homepage, and it’s also right here, for your convenience.
My thanks to everyone who tuned in. Your interest, your readership, and your viewership are all dearly appreciated.
Cheers, and Happy Gardening!
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Much delayed response to your video. The video shows most graphically the damage from insufficient mulching.
Many thanks.
Thanks for watching it, Rick, and for commenting here. And yes, the insulating and moisture-retaining properties of wood chip mulch are undeniable. The vid and the pics, I thought, did a decent job of demonstrating the point. Thanks once again, Rick.
I never realized the importance of mulching for winter. I only thought it was important to do it for summer to prevent plants from drying out. The comparison pictures really show what a difference it makes. Thanks for the great information.
Thanks for checking out the feature and the video, Kevin. I really appreciate that. The fall or winter application of a reasonable layer of wood chip mulch in your planting beds is definitely a good idea from the standpoint of not only moisture retention (particularly important over the course of an abnormally dry fall and winter), but also for insulation and protection of your plants against the cold. I really blew it last year by not mulching, and my early sprouting/blooming perennials paid the price. Thanks once again, Kevin!
Very interesting and informative as always 🌼🌸🌼
Thank you for checking this one out, Roxxy, and for watching the vid. And, of course, thank you for your kind words. I really appreciate that. I’m glad you found the material interesting. I’m pretty sure all of these plants will ultimately be fine, but they’d be a lot further along at this point if they’d all been properly mulched. Hpoefully, in another couple of weeks, they’ll all really start bouncing back.Thanks once again, Roxxy!