There are two schools of thought at the end of autumn. One, that the gardener neatens and puts the last of his back out in a final, pre-Christmas wrestle with Nature; or two, that he ignores it and goes to Puerto Rico for a long, well-deserved holiday.

The brilliance of the second plan is that, correctly spun, the gardener is merely showing great deference for the wild creatures that inhabit his garden during the winter – giving them the food, lodging and general succor that is less and less available as our wild spaces fall prey to the developer’s magic re-zoning pen. It is rare thing when our altruistic moments coincide with our more self-interested ones, and thus I embrace this plan whole heartedly.

Thus, I’ve got a lot of pruning and cutting back to do in these next few weeks, and it’s not always easy to start. Aside from the cold, I have gotten quite used to the shapes of last year’s garden in all its muted, disheveled sweetness, and have a hard time letting go – even with the promise of new and better growth ahead.

The grasses are the hardest to see go, with their punctuated rhythms that create flow and echo tawny color throughout the garden; but the fertile fronds of the ostrich and sensitive ferns are also mourned. They are present in such abundance and mark territory that will be dormant for a few weeks yet. And the less I say about the rounded hips on the roses the better.

Here are a few tips for the work that awaits both of us – hopefully making the process easier and faster.

Relish small accomplishments. It’s usually a big job. Make a decision to work on a section of your garden or a particular type of plant and see that job through to the end. For example, prune all the roses, or cut all the grasses, or all the ferns – or simply deal with the area around the front door. If your shrub requires fertilizer, feeding once you’ve pruned is a good way to keep track of what you’ve done.

Before you begin, do a proper yearly renovation of your pruners or loppers or shears with a diamond file and a wet sharpening stone. It’s a task that’s easy to do in front of the TV on a cold night and hard to do in a cold potting shed with the wind blowing. A grit embedded eraser (available at manufacturers like Niwaki) will also remove all the sap and nonsense from last year. Sharp pruners make all the difference for the health of your plant and for the speed at which you can prune.

Keep a wheelbarrow with you to contain the debris before it goes on the ground and makes piles you "need to get to" in another four weeks. Clean as you go and you’ll feel better about what you did.

Add a few plastic trugs to your tool shed, allowing you to bring them into beds, fill them and dump them into the wheelbarrow instead of flinging bits of rose cane from the middle of the beds in the general direction of the wheelbarrow.

Cutting back grasses can be a tiring job. If you have many, you may want to invest in a small battery-operated hedge trimmer, which makes extremely short work of a large job (I use the Ego 56V series and adore it). Make it easier still by using a long bungie cord around the girth of the grass, and then cutting low at the base. You’ll have an easily managed bunch of dried grass to dispose of.

Don’t go crazy and start whacking back plants that aren’t going to show you new buds for a while yet such as fig or chaste tree. Our cold winter killed many new buds, but plants such as hydrangea may yet have life below the killed layers of the bud itself. Take a wait and see approach. They’ll let you know what kind of winter they had soon enough.

Cutting back can be a satisfying spring job, but you may want to make changes in your timing (fall/winter) depending on what you’re seeing out there now (such as a huge amount of seedlings from those grass heads). I’ll be rethinking the extra mulch I’ve piled on canna, as most of it has simply given cover to new dynasties of voles, who have very much enjoyed the comforts of shelter and a good meal, and are excited about the new grandkids three holes down.