Can my garden survive being cut back inappropriately?

I am SO angry.

I live in a townhouse and the complex gets basic gardening services (lawn care, mulching of the beds), but mostly I am responsible for my own garden beds. My beds literally get comments from strangers passing by! Yesterday the complex's gardener cut back all the spent perennials , which would be fine if I'd known it was going to happen and could have asked him to leave my beds alone, but I didn't know about it.

The gardeners cut back evergreen Siberian irises, dozens of evergreen heucheras, winter blooming hellebore, basil growth on all kinds of plants that are supposed to have their basil growth intact for the winter!

I am beside myself! What will die and what will survive? I live in zone 6b and some of my beds are very protected, while others are not particularly protected at all. Is there anything I can do to rescue any of my lovely plants?

Symathies to you from those of us who live in complexes with "lawn care" included in the monthly assessment. Didn't you say you are responsible for your garden beds? Then wasn't the worker overstepping his bounds by decapitating your plants? This is something you might want to take up with your governing board. You could put them on notice that next year, when the permanent damage can be assessed, you may need compensation for the plants that don't come back. In the meantime, the only thing you can do is wait and see what happens in the spring. You don't need me to tell you this, but cutting away dead (spent) tops and cutting off green growth such as your irises, winter blooming hellebore, etc. is horticultural malpractice. Do you happen to have photos of the beds before the butchering took place? That would help you build a case to present to your board for damages when it can be established which plants are going to recover and which are beyond that. It's little compensation, but this scenario happens all the time with much resulting heartache.

It is tiny homeowner's association and everyone knows what was there. I have no pics and I could kick myself for it! Everyone kept telling me to take pics and i was too lazy to do it.

The more I look the worse it is. They butchered things that were still in bloom, like gaura and blanket flower and... well the list goes on and on. I'd like to know how someone could mistake an Itea Virginica shrub for a perennial and cut it to the ground? I grew that thing from when it was just a few inches tall and I was very attached to it! GRRRR!

Anyway, our contact is contacting the gardener and hopefully he will make reparations, but the fact is that no matter what, I will not get to enjoy my hellebore or heuchera this winter.

The fact very likely is that the gardener didn't really care enough to observe the difference between a "dead" top and plants that were obviously still green- even those that were blooming. He was being paid to cut away the tops of the plants in the beds, and the easy way was "off with their heads" for all.
It was probably a combination of ignorance and indifference. I may sound cynical, but I have lived in three different houses that were in communities with "lawn service," and horror stories about the damage "gardeners" do are myriad. These associations often contract with people to do the mowing etc. and they in turn send UNSUPERVISED workers out who don't know plants and are in way over their heads, and it is THEY who do the irreversible damage.

In our part of the country, a common practice nowadays is for workers to cut off so many of the lower limbs of trees that the trees resemble those on the Serengetti (sp) Plain of Africa, where giraffes eat everything off trees as high as they can reach. I have a lovely tree that I have been nurturing for over ten years, and I live in fear that one day I will go out and they will have done that to my tree. As you know, lower limbs that are removed don't grow back! I remind the yard crew all the time to LEAVE THE TREE ALONE, but all it takes is one new ignorant worker one time to ruin the tree forever.

How awful! I agree with dp72 that many of the "landscapers" and "gardeners" sent to do such work aren't really qualified and give a black eye to the professionals. Sadly, they do whatever is easiest for them. The flowers aren't important to them, only their paycheck. I really feel for you having lost all those beautiful flowers and shrubs. I'm sure lot's of folks don't understand how attached we gardeners get to our flowers and other plants after we've spent so much time and money growing them. Something you took a lot of pride in has been stolen from you and can't be easily replaced. I hope you can work something out with whoever was responsible for all the damage.

laura10801,
The only plants you mention for which cutting back basal foliage is a detriment is the woody ones, i.e. any trees and shrubs.
All the other perennials should be completely unaffected. EDIT: Perhaps I should explain further. The plants you mention, with the exception of any trees and shrubs, are herbaceous perennials - they are basically designed by nature to withstand dying to the ground each year, and regrowing again from the crown. Whether they actually die completely to the ground depends on your climate - even here, the basal leaves on some species of plants remain evergreen. However, even if I went out and cut them off now, it would have no effect on the plant's ability to regenerate it's top growth in spring.

The difference with woody plants is that they are not "designed" to die to the ground; they have instead evolved to sprout leaves in spring from buds along the woody stems that stay "alive" through the winters. Cutting trees and shrubs to the ground was not the right thing to do, but it is not the end of the world either - the plant will send up new branches. If the trees/shrubs were young and "unformed" enough, it may not be apparent at all in a couple of years that they were ever cut to the ground.

altagardener



This message was edited Nov 14, 2008 3:26 PM

I think you are minimizing the effect on the homeowner of the butchering done by the yard man. If someone came into your yard and cut some of your plants to the ground, would you shrug it off and say, "Oh, well, in 2 or 3 years they'll be back like they were"? I don't believe she indicated that her world had collapsed around her, or that she was unaware that the plants may regenerate. One great benefit of Dave's is that members can vent to one another when someone does something stupid like this man did.
Unless I am mistaken, she was not asking for a lecture.

Well, the title of the thread was, "Can my garden survive being cut back inappropriately?"

The original poster then went on to say, "I am beside myself! What will die and what will survive?"

The conclusion of the post was "Is there anything I can do to rescue any of my lovely plants?"

Surely the original poster would be relieved to know that her (I assume from the name, that is) perennials will survive, will not die, and do not need to be rescued?
And as this is the "Beginning Gardening Questions" forum, is it not fitting to pass that information along?



This message was edited Nov 14, 2008 7:06 PM