My daughter's Dundee garden at it's best. It is now time to shut it down for the winter. The tall pink flowering Meconopsis napaulensis hybrid has now set seed right down to the bottom flowering spikes and this has been harvested, dried, cleaned and packeted to send of the various amateur seed exchanges such as the Alpine Garden Society and the Meconopsis group. Unflowered rosettes of this hybrid and other evergreen monocarpic species need the dead leaves removing and the dead foliage of the perennial blue poppies needs carefully removing. I never turn the soil over in these beds since it is so easy to damage plants already dormant and the buds for next year but I like to top dress with 2  inches (5 to 6 cms.) of really well rotted and sieved leaf mould ideally or composted bark or some such if that is not available. In a severe winter this does stop frost penetrating so deeply.