Above is an example of cutting back some plants while leaving others that are much taller for overwintering as groundcover. 
Where I cut back as in here, I’ll mulch with leaves, grass clippings, and maybe straw. I try to make sure there is no bare ground in the flower bed through the winter. If we get a lot of freeze/thaw temperatures, it could harm the roots of the plants, especially the older perennials. This is a very small flower bed in the southeast corner of my yard just to illustrate an example.
It’s only the first week of October and the first hard freeze is maybe more than a month away. But yard maintenance and gardening are a twelve-month activity. There is always something to do. Just as in the Spring when we count back the weeks before our seedlings can go out without the threat of freezing (usually about April 20 here in Springfield), cleaning up our yard and cutting back perennials and care for small trees are a concern in the fall.
Weather can be tricky and gauging dropping temperatures now when it’s still in the mid-eighties is not easy. We could have just a few weeks, or until Thanksgiving in late November, who can say. For myself, I have a lot to do, or I can just wait for some until Spring. If I can, I like to experiment creating micro-climates all over my front yard. I have eight to ten beds with flowers that are full of three- to four-year-old perennials almost everything starting from seed myself. My front yard looks browner than usually because we went almost two months without rain in drought conditions.
For myself, I’m finding that at seventy-three my energy levels are what they used to be, plus when it gets too hot every morning I have to come inside. But my options are unlimited, and no one cares but myself and of course my neighbors who have grown to like seeing flowers and what I do throughout the year.
I am concerned about wildlife, bees, butterflies, etc., and maintain the habitat that I have created for them. It is especially important because there is little habitat for them in my neighborhood with seeds to forage and groundcover. I also consider the needs of wildlife in my backyard as well… as long as they don’t harm my chickens.
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