The same restraint applies to most spring-flowering shrubs — the ones that bloom before midsummer have set their buds already. Ornamental grasses, sedum heads, echinacea and teasel are better left too: they hold structure through grey months, they catch frost beautifully, and the seed heads feed birds through the leanest weeks of the year. A border cut flat to the soil in October is a border with nothing to look at until March.
What genuinely benefits from attention now
Do cut back anything that has collapsed into a wet, slimy mess — hostas, crocosmia foliage, the soggy remains of annuals. Rotting material sitting on crowns invites problems. Do shorten long, whippy rose stems by about a third, not as a proper prune but to stop winter wind rocking the plant loose in the soil. Do lift and pot up anything tender if you have the space, and do clear fallen leaves off lawns and low alpines while leaving them piled under hedges and shrubs where they'll break down into something useful.
Everything else — the weeding, the edging, the obsessive tidying — is optional, and is largely a matter of whether it makes you feel better. Mine does, so I do a bit. But I've stopped pretending it's horticulture.
