The perennials have now been put to bed. Come early spring, and it will be time to pull back away from the emerging crowns, discouraging slugs and snails from snacking on what they regard as a free salad bar.
"To mulch or not to mulch, aye, that is the rub," might have quoth the Bard had he experienced climate change. A few decades ago, northern gardeners could count on snow cover to protect perennials from frost damage during winter months. Indeed, many discovered that they could successfully overwinter plants that further south succumbed without such protection. "This news is old enough, yet it is every day's news," really did write William Shakespeare.
Nothing is permanent, things change as gardeners are forced to admit. As Ogden Nash lamented: