This is for all of you gardeners who are experiencing severe weather conditions that are beyond your winter norm, like Pam Penick who blogs at Digging in Austin and Loree Bohl at Danger Garden in Portland. Conditions that may damage, if not outright kill, plants you've been growing for a short time or a very long time. We've had those kind of winters when we lost a lot of things. But sometimes the damage turns out to look much worse than it is.
So I share these photos to help you get through this miserable spell. It was raining here all day Tuesday except for when the rain was freezing. Today looks like more of the same.
This is what my 'Fernspray Gold' Chamaecyparis looked like in the Spring of 2014. At least half of it was brown and crunchy. I trimmed all the obviously dead foliage off and sat back and waited.
It took two years but by the spring of 2016, it had not only regrown all that foliage but had continue to put on height. This is a plant than can easily suffer winter burn or worse here, but I haven't lost any of this genus over the years.
I cannot figure out what year we had the heavy snowfall that damaged this Korean maple, the tree with the rusty leaves in the foreground. This tree keeps its foliage in the winter which means the snow sticks to it and can really weigh it down. One winter that caused the main trunk to split. There was nothing we could do but wait until spring.
Mark decided to take a chance and bolt the two halves of the tree trunk back together with a "stove" bolt. The results amazed us as the tree never seemed fazed at all and has continued to grow and prosper from that moment to this.
In the winter of 2013/14, we had serious dieback on our bamboo, Fargesia rufa 'Green Panda'. Last year it started to finally recover and I'm hoping it will attain some stature again this coming season.
But it has been slow to recover. It used to be twice as tall as the yellowing Ginkgo that it's growing behind (below). Given the warmer temps that are coming later this week and the rain that is washing away the snow cover, I am getting a little worried and hoping that I don't find myself joining the rest of you in bemoaning the fate of my garden this winter.
