You can top dress--just put compost, mulch, etc on top of the soil. Just make sure you don't bury plants that you want to grow. The worms and microbes will work the mulch into the soil as they digest it.

You likely have some early spring, mid-summer, & fall plants.

What I would do is mark what you can now. Spread some compost maybe an inch or two. Followed by some leaf mulch on top to keep next years weeds down.

When the early spring plants sprout mark them. That should give you an idea where everything is. From there on out it will be mostly weed management & spotting other things that may surprise you.

You'll have to come up with whatever method you decide on for plant tags. I cut up old discarded window blinds to pointed ends, marking with pencil so they don't sun fade like ink will. You can buy some very nice plant tags too.

Or visit the winter sowing forum where you can find out about an adhesive backed foil (used in plumbing) to make other plant tags. The idea is the impression left in the foil is still somewhat ledgible when the Sharpie ink you decided to use fades ;-)

You can always make a drawing which should give you some close estimates of where things are.

Oh, go to the library to get books to help ID things you have never seen before. Or just look online but it is sometimes easier to have something to take outside with you.

HTH,
Gumby_CT
ps. Do NOT forget soil samples before you add ANY ammendments (incl. compost). Be sure to mark where you took what samples from so they make sense later.

I topdress in early autumn. Or now, even. I spread a couple of inches of compost over the whole bed, although not right on top of the plants. My perennials love this, they've really taken off since I began doing it. I also amend planting holes when I move/add etc., and I generously sprinkle cottonseed meal or holly tone or something appropriate around the base of each shrub and tree. I do this in springtime just as things come out of dormancy.

I find that most years what with the adding, removing, relocating, etc, a lot of the bed ends up getting nicely amended over a span of a few years.

I suppose some day I'll be perfectly satisfied with the garden and then I'll have to come up with a new plan.

Thank you all for the advice. So I don't need to turn the soil over at all. Well that saves a lot of work!

What I understand then is that I should mark where and what the plants are, then put compost down everywhere else covered by mulch.

But won't that leave an awful lot of the bed uncovered for winter? There are a lot of plants..

Been reading about the Interbay method. What if I wait till everything dies back, say November, then cover the whole bed with grass clippings, leaves and whatever else I can find, add water, cover the whole thing with burlap, wet the burlap, and leave it for winter -- which around here means under snow most of the time. Will that smother the perennials?

Sorry if I sound dense!

You don't need to work so hard.

If you have tender plants (that cannot withstand freezing temperatures), you may want to cover them with heavy mulch for the winter.

You can add compost and mulch whenever you like -- I don't follow a schedule, I just add compost whenever I have time and compost. if the plants have not died back, don't cover them up; if they have, you can put compost on top of them (not more than 3-4 inches, usually). Spring and fall are, IIRC, the best times to add compost if you are following a schedule.

In spring, add compost around the plants once they have emerged and are not so delicate that you will damage them when you add the compost. The soilfoodweb that digests the compost and makes it available to plants isn't active until the soil warms up, so you may want to leave the soil uncovered in early spring so the sun can reach it and warm it up. But if you added compost in the fall, it's not worth it to uncover the soil in the spring.

Later in spring or summer, you can add mulch if needed, but again, 3-4 inches at most. Perennials that are fully leafed out and shading the soil won't need mulch, but you can add an inch or less if you like the way it looks, or if there are bare patches.

A good book to get from the library is The Well-Tended Perennial Garden by Traci diSabato-Aust. She talks about cutting back perennials to get longer bloom times. For more on the soil food web, see the book Teaming with Microbes.

With big new gardens, you'll be getting your baptism by fire so I definitely wouldn't make more work for myself by lifting the wood chip mulch. Also, since the perennials died back in the fall and returned in the spring, the previous gardener obviously put in plants that do well in your climate and garden's environment so hardiness doesn't seem to be an issue. For us in colder climates, snow cover is the best insolation - it protects from heaving, wind dessication, sun scald. You could definitely smother things by over protecting- compost, mulch, grass clippings, leaves plus wet burlap. Seems that'd be a sure recipe for rot. I've relied on winter snow cover since I don't mulch - nothing against mulch but just haven't wanted to go that route. I may change my mind if our rain deficient conditions go into a third year and beyond.

Since I was in your situation inheriting large family gardens (all of which needed restoration, rejuvination and reorganization), mixed shrub borders, and big expanses of lawn in 2002, I can reiterate what's been said above and maybe offer a tip or two:

You can't get it all done at once. I spent the first growing season keeping a garden calendar/diary noting when things emerged, bloom time, color, size of plant, did it need dividing, thinning, transplanting elsewhere, or discarding altogether. I used that first season to prune back overgrown shrubs, plant Viburnum in some gaps, dig out some ratty Barberry that wasn't worth keeping, discard old hybrid tea roses that managed to throw out 1 black spotted leaf apiece. And, although composting was always done on a small scale, I turned it into a much bigger operation. So make sure you start or continue a compost pile.

Sometimes you just can't save everything. Weeding and clearing out grasses from around dense clumps of things was too hard. I let things bloom out and just lifted them all, cleaned them out, divided, and with whatever part of the bed was temporarily empty, I dug and screened out the grasses, weeds and lily sprouts, did some soil amending and reset the plant divisions. Anything I couldn't relocate, I potted up and put on the curb with a "Free" sign. Gone almost instantly and saved from being composted. There is an optimal time for dividing plants, but I have the tendency to do it any time regardless. No losses so far.

A little breathing room to get in and among plants. At first I liked the smothering of space effect, but once getting into serious weeding, space between things got to make more sense - and I wasn't stepping on things in the process.

Take advantage of naturally occuring plants. My first sign of spring is a sea of Scilla, and as those are fading and starting to disappear altogether the wild forget-me-nots start. The forget-me-nots are such dense mounds they choke out other weeds and are easy to pull out if inconvenient. When the ferns start to unfurl I get wild columbine and Johnny Jump-Ups.

The joy of annuals. Although primarily a perennial gardener, annuals are supurb bloom gap fillers. Inexpensive, readily available, some folks even have great luck starting them from seed (I don't) and non stop until the first killing frost.

Gardening should be enjoyable and a rewarding pasttime. If something doesn't appeal to you or doesn't perform like you expect, replace it. I've added plants my Father wouldn't have considered on a bet - different sedums, daylilies other than the old Hyperion and Tetrina's Daughter, Oriental poppies, Black Eyed Susans, bleeding hearts, hostas, salvias...

Much more than you wanted to read, no doubt. But I know what it's like to be faced with sorting out a garden you didn't initially plant. If you run into things you can't identify and have a digital camera, posters on the "Name that Plant" Forum are incredibly quick with identifications.

I think the only reasons you would want to dig up the perennials are:

1) To move them because you don't like their current locations.
2) To divide them if they have become overgrown.

From a soil perspective it's not necessary to remove them for any reason. Keep in mind that the soil is fed from the top down. Adding layers of mulch, compost, and other organic matter as it becomes available should be the only thing the soil needs in the long run.

-Diggity

I use shredded wood mulch in summer, but most of it has disappeared and been digested by fall. I collect as many fall leaves as I can, mulch them up, and then spread them on my beds. By spring they're mostly gone, and the beds are crawling with worms. There are huge worm tunnels all over. Those leaves seem to bring in the worms from miles around. Sometimes I use grass clippings as mulch too, mixing with the leaves. This gives me more material to use and the grass seems to help hold the leaves in place better in winter winds.

Then, I store as many leaves as possible for composting in the coming year.

I think if you just do this, you will see a big improvement in the soil. Just don't smother existing plants with the milch, and keep grass clippings a few inches away from the plants.

Karen

Aside from all the other wonderful advice, I'd like to add that in the case of bulbed plants, if they've been there for a while they might actually benefit from being divided - i.e. flower more the following year - so don't be completely afraid to cultivate the soil a little bit in there, even if it is only "around" where the perennials grow and now necessarily through them.

Wow, thanks for all the great advice. I'm realizing that compost is the answer, so I've started a pile. Duluthinbloomz4, you hit the nail on the head when you say 'you can't do it all at once'. This is a big place and it feels like a full-time job just keeping it looking neat, nevermind thriving!

I cleared a space at the edge of the woods to make a wire container and what do you know, I found all this great-looking soil under the leaves and other debris, so I shoveled it up and will start with that.

The biggest hassle if you ask me is the grass invasion! It comes up everywhere, even in the middle of clumps of ground cover.

Thanks again. I'm saving all these responses as a guide.