Dan Pearson on the apparent calm of his garden in winter

In winter, the growth is in abeyance and there is time to reflect, to plan for change and evolution. With the leaves down and the last of the bulbs planted in November, my partner Huw Morgan and I take a pause as the garden transitions and the energy of one season is replaced by the apparent calmness of winter.

In truth, this gentle pause is more a period of adjustment than a time of stasis. Look closely and the garden is far from still. First frosts will wilt the last of the nasturtiums and the foliage of anything susceptible. The blackened dahlias and tender Salvia patens are cut back as soon as this happens and mulched with a protective eiderdown of garden compost. Our heavy ground is free draining on the slopes and the tubers are safe with a mulch, as long as we watch for slugs in spring.

I avoid working with tender plants that are living beyond their comfort zone, but do make concessions for the ones that turn a place into somewhere special. The gunnera, which grow in the wet crease between the two fields that we call The Ditch, are large enough now to weather the winter, but I like to protect their crowns after the first frost scorches the foliage and they lie akimbo. Before the foliage loses its structural integrity, the leaves are cut and upturned over the crowns with one layered over the next to form a winter shelter. Building their winter lodgings is a precaution for which I am happy to lose a day and, looking back as the light fades, the earlier chaos of frosted limbs is replaced by a sense of order in the gunnera grove.

MAY WE SUGGEST: Designer Dan Pearson takes us on a tour of his wild, beautiful Somerset garden

A scale change happens over the weeks that run to the end of the year, as the growth in the garden at Hillside becomes daily more transparent, and foliage withers and falls away. The hemerocallis are the first to lose structure, occupying a fraction of the space they took early in the growing season. Their flowering stems and occasional seed heads will be all that remains as winter skeletons. We go into the beds in December to make a light edit of those plants that die with less grace, but leave the greater majority standing to weather the winter.

This is good practice. Watching the weekly changes sees fallen foliage pulled to earth by worms and soil protected from the weather. The stems and spent twiggery of perennials left standing act as hibernacula for insects and a seed source for birds that flock to the garden and work one plant at a time as winter progresses. If we’re lucky enough to have frost, it highlights the remaining skeletons: finely spoked umbellifers, the bolt of giant fennel, claw-like seedpods of asclepias and poker-black Digitalis ferruginea. The silvery constellations of Eurybia divaricata stand resilient despite their apparent delicacy.

The grasses are an important component in blending the garden with the landscape beyond, turning pale as bones on a dry day and cinnamon brown when wet. As well as providing this down-time foundation, they harness the wind that whips our land and the light that rakes across it. Some last better than others – the Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea ‘Transparent’, which hold the intersection of paths, are the first to fall apart. Colouring butter yellow for a spectacular three weeks, then splaying once the winter wet gets into them, they create a sprawl. But the planting around them is generous enough for the topple. In contrast, the Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ stand through winter storms, and the various panicum still look interesting on the other side of winter. The Miscanthus sinensis ‘Krater’ are placed so their plumage can be seen with the light behind it when the sun is low. Celebrating light is important when it is in short supply and the feathery seed heads are incandescent on a bright day.