Right now, some of the garden looks rough and fading. Now it’s clean-up time.

Pull up the annual plants which have flowered so happily all summer, collecting them in a barrel or on a tarp. If they’re healthy, without insects or disease, they can go onto the compost pile.

Certain tall annual or perennial blooms may produce seeds. The most conspicuous of those would be sunflowers. Leave these standing in the garden as natural bird feeders.

Some flowers like chrysanthemums and tall, purple-blooming verbena bonariensis may still be in bloom. They’ll show off better when the earlier annuals have been removed.

So will the late-blossoming perennial Alliums and the asters. Upright sedums like Autumn Joy, Indian Chief and Meteor will last into winter.

Other autumn beauties include Korean chrysanthemums (which will be leggy unless you pruned them back last June) and Montauk daisies. Low fall-blooming bulb plants like colchicum and autumn crocus should be finishing up shortly.

Enjoy the end-of-season display, along with the last roses of summer.

Clean out window boxes. For an off-season display, add evergreen shoots with maybe some berried twigs.

One year I jazzed up my window boxes with sprigs of scarlet winterberry (Ilex verticillata), which looked beautiful until an enterprising blue jay discovered them and ate every berry.

Begin to get the roses ready for winter. Some gardeners take their climbing roses from their supports, wrap in burlap and lay those stems on the ground.

When serious frost arrives, the swaddled stems are muffled in old hay or leaves for winter protection.

Raked maple leaves have a habit of matting, so if possible, use oak leaves. This goes for upright shrub roses, too.  My suggestion: make a cylindrical cage of chicken wire to fit generously around each bush.

Before installing, hill up the base of the bush with about 10 inches of soil. Get this from the vegetable garden.  Now enclose the shrub in the cylinder.

Later, when winter arrives in earnest (usually before Christmas), pour in old leaves or maybe pine needles to protect the rose from winds and temperature fluctuations.  

In the herb patch: did you grow lavender this year? Make sure it’s in a well-drained part of the garden, for it can’t stand wet feet or stems. Rake any accumulated leaves away from the plant and use a gentle pine bough blanket for a cold weather shield.

Have you a vegetable plot? Pull all root vegetables or mulch them with blankets of old hay. When bringing any of these indoors, store without washing to guard them from being accidentally scratched or bruised.

Make sure that all pumpkins and squash are stored in a cool, dry place. (Mine would go under the beds in an unheated guest room.) Don’t store anything which is bruised or cut; use those right away.

When cleaning debris from the vegetable area, cut all standing pea or bean plants to the ground. Leave those nitrogen-fixing roots right where they are, to enhance the soil for next year.

Use raked leaves in piles to rot into leaf mold, or add in layers in the compost pile. Another use: bag the leaves for mulch in the winter garden or around the base of the house to cut down on drafts and perhaps on fuel bills.  

They talk about “putting the garden to bed,” but underneath, bulbs of daffodils, scillas and tulips are putting down roots for next spring’s show. Truly, the garden doesn’t sleep.