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Chop and drop: all you need to know

It’s super easy, reaps a range of rewards, and is soaring in popularity. Is this the composting technique where everyone wins?

Chop and drop is a great way to achieve more in your garden by actually doing less. This combined composting and mulching technique can save effort, benefit your soil and help wildlife – here’s how it works and why you should try it in your garden.


What is chop and drop?

Chop and drop does exactly what it says on the tin. When the old growth of herbaceous perennials is cut back, instead of taking all the material away to the compost heap – only to bring it back again a few months later, once decomposed, for mulching – you simply cut the trimmings up into small pieces and let them lie in place. These form a layer that covers the soil around the plants and decomposes in situ.

With benefits for wildlife and the health of your soil, it’s a great way to ‘do more by doing less’, according to horticulturist Alex Paines, who uses the technique at RHS Rosemoor.


Chop and drop in progress on the Clover Hill borders at RHS Hyde Hall
What are the benefits of chop and drop?

With benefits for wildlife, soil and even the gardener, chop and drop could just be the all-round win we all need in our gardens.

“We started doing chop and drop to help the harvest mice that live in our Clover Hill borders, which can be affected by cold and predators,” explains Sarah Wilson-Frost, horticulturist at RHS Hyde Hall, which was the first of the RHS Gardens to adopt chop and drop – now widely practiced across most of the Gardens. “They’re a Priority Species in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan and it’s really important that we conserve them, so we trialled chop and drop in a few areas to provide continued cover and nesting material for them.

“In the trials we found that things didn’t self-seed as readily because the chop and drop acted as an effective layer of mulch, reducing the amount of weeding and editing out we needed to do,” she says. “It helps to retain soil moisture – after chop and drop in spring, the soil in these beds stayed damp throughout the summer.”

“We had ground-nesting bees, spiders, toads and lots of other wildlife. The cut material provides habitat for small mammals, while the hollow stems provide places for insects to hibernate, nest and lay eggs, as well as opportunities for fungi. It also reduces the carbon footprint from trips to take the cut material to our compost area. If you try this at home, it will reduce the amount you might need to squeeze into council green bins.”

© Sarah Wilson-Frost / RHS
Sedum regrowth and old stems left after shredding with a hedge trimmer
© Sarah Wilson-Frost / RHS
The shredded material provides habitat for wildlife such as toads
“Keeping more organic matter in situ provides more nutrients for soil flora and fauna, which has knock-on benefits up the food chain, in turn attracting and feeding higher-level consumers – the wildlife that visits our gardens,” adds Nina Burdin, horticulturist at RHS Bridgewater.

As well as being loved by both gardeners and wildlife, chop and drop is backed by science, too.

“Chop and drop optimises your soil health, because the carbon is used more efficiently and very little is wasted,” says Dr Marc Redmile-Gordon, RHS Senior Soil Scientist. “You reap the maximum benefit from the carbon in that plant material. It’s even better than composting, because you don’t waste any nutrients as the material decomposes – they go directly back to the plants that the material was taken from.”

“Chop and drop also improves water use efficiency by reducing evaporation from the soil surface, minimises disruption to local ecology as everything stays close to where it was before, and it’s good for your back as well, through reducing the amount of manual handling. It’s a great way to be lazy and feel good about yourself at the same time – and your garden biodiversity will thank you for it,” he says.


© James Hall / RHS
‘Tapestry-like’: early spring chop and drop at RHS Bridgewater
When should I do chop and drop?

Late winter to early spring is the best time to do chop and drop to deliver benefits for wildlife, according to RHS Principal Horticultural Advisor Leigh Hunt.

“Chop and drop can be done at any time when you would normally cut back, from October through to March. However, overwintering stems provide a lot of support for invertebrates, so leaving things standing and waiting until February or March to cut back then will provide the most support for wildlife in terms of shelter and habitat through the harsh winter months,” he says.

“If you do it earlier, there may be more fungal activity to recover nutrients from the fresher plant material, but that’s not a time of year when the plants will use it anyway, since they’re not in active growth. If plants left standing start to turn to mush and smother the crowns of other plants, you can still go in and remove that material at that point.”


Leaving perennials standing over winter provides habitat, food for wildlife and structural interest
How do I do chop and drop?

For small areas, it’s best to cut back herbaceous perennials by hand to nearly ground level with secateurs or shears. For larger borders, RHS horticulturists have been trying out various time-saving approaches.

“On Clover Hill at RHS Hyde Hall, we used hedge cutters in February to shred everything – including the sedums, which people often think of as quite delicate – which saved so much time,” says Sarah. “In the past we’d avoided leaving these ‘hedgehogs’ of cut stems, cutting right back to the ground instead to keep it neat, but those short, upright hollow stems are actually really great for biodiversity.”

“At RHS Bridgewater, we use a small ride-on mower with the deck set at 15cm off the ground,” adds horticulturist James Hall. “Rather than gathering the material, taking it away and bringing it back, everything is left where it lies. You don’t see the mess for long, as plants quickly grow back, and I actually think it looks more interesting than bare soil – it’s a bit of a tapestry.”


© James Hall / RHS
Using a ride-on mower to shred and mulch cut material at RHS Bridgewater
What plants can I use chop and drop on?

“At RHS Hyde Hall we use chop and drop for ornamental grasses and most herbaceous perennials, avoiding prolific self-seeders,” says Sarah.

“Plants break down at different speeds and in different ways,” adds Alex. “With practice, you get a feel for this and how to do chop and drop in a visually pleasing way.

“At RHS Rosemoor we find that hostas, irises and most other non-grass monocots tend to turn into a stringy mush once hit by frosts. This mush is very hard to cut down, unless you’re using a sickle, and can make working in the mulched material difficult, so I tend to cut them down and remove them fairly early on,” he says.

“The ornamental grasses such as Miscanthus are great for chop and drop material as they don’t tend to decompose quickly and they maintain their colour, so can be used to create a consistent and even mulch that lasts at least a year.”


Shredded grasses (foreground) on Clover Hill at RHS Hyde Hall
Can chop and drop be combined with other mulch?

“If you have either bare soil or another mulch down, chop and drop is absolutely brilliant,” says Marc. “It works well if you’ve already mulched with bark chippings or homemade compost.”

It’s also possible to add another mulch on top after chopping and dropping. National Trust senior gardener Joe Mott has been trying out different ways to chop and drop in the walled garden at Wimpole Estate.

“Though we generally cut back in the spring to leave habitat for wildlife, we had to cut back one bed in the autumn to make room for bulb planting,” he says. “We chopped and dropped, just moving the cut material aside for long enough to plant the bulbs, then topped up the chop and drop with a layer of homemade compost to bury the bulbs a bit deeper and provide that extra layer of nutrients and weed suppression.

“This also gave a more traditional neat mulched finish for this particular area, while benefitting from the reclaimed nutrients and reduced transport of material that comes with chop and drop.”


© Joe Mott / National Trust
Chop and drop at Wimpole Estate NT, carried out in autumn to make room for bulb planting
© Joe Mott / National Trust
A layer of homemade compost added on top of the chop and drop
How do I make chop and drop look neat?

Often, keeping chop and drop in line with traditional perceptions of neatness is just a matter of a minor compromise. “If you leave the front two feet of the border as bare soil after cutting back, then chop and drop beyond, that makes it look intentional,” says Sarah. “A neat edge gives the impression of neatness.”

However, the rise of chop and drop is part of a sea change of shifting perceptions around traditional tidiness in gardens. Attitudes are increasingly being reframed in the context of the global biodiversity crisis – in which gardeners can play an important role.

“Gardeners have to do their bit to save the planet and conserve the biodiversity in our care. This has to guide everything we do,” says Joe. “Here at Wimpole, I leave everything that I possibly can until spring and even then I’ll be really mindful of wildlife when cutting back. I’m trying to change mindsets and convince people that what they’ve always thought looks rubbish over winter, doesn’t actually look rubbish.”


© Sarah Wilson-Frost / RHS
Leaving a margin gives a neat look
© Sarah Wilson-Frost / RHS
A damp February/March day is the ideal opportunity
Keeping it circular

Chop and drop is one of a range of ways you can close the loop on the material produced in your garden, repurposing resources that might otherwise be considered ‘waste’ materials, to increase sustainability, boost biodiversity and minimise effort.

“There’s a whole suite of ways I’ve changed my practices here at RHS Rosemoor to benefit biodiversity in the garden,” says Alex. “As well as chop and drop, I save prunings and trimmings to create brush piles for habitat in nearby but less visible parts of the garden. I consider weeding a process of selection rather than elimination, and if the weed isn’t competing or harming the aesthetic, I leave it for biodiversity. I blow leaves to the back of the bed rather than removing them all, to mulch and create habitat. The soil has improved in the two years I’ve been doing this.

“What we want is to keep material from the garden, in the garden. These are all innovations that not just save time and effort, but are great for biodiversity.”
 
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