A local gardening friend recently posted on her Facebook page a list of the plants in her garden suffering after our destructive winter. In her words: "I lost more plants than ever this winter. The combination of the cold winter storms along with the east winds I get took a bigger toll than usual. The east winds made the storms much more damaging." On one of my Facebook posts she wrote: "It was the hardest winter on my plants I've ever experienced. I have more damaged and dead than I thought could happen, 25 year old plants included." While I would never wish that kind of destruction on a fellow gardener, it was still comforting to know that my experiences are not an anomaly. Especially when the plant damage seems so random this year.
Since I use this blog as a garden journal I'm posting a list of my dead and damaged plants. I have no doubt I'll look back on this list in the future. Memories—even the bad ones—fade with time. Plus maybe you'll find it comforting to know you're not alone?
Defoliated evergreen trees and shrubs the leaves on some of these evergreens didn’t just all fall at once, in some cases it’s been a 3 month’s long process. Clean-up
goes on and on. Spring has been so cold that they're not showing any signs
of re-leafing, even if I'm hopeful they're going to. It’s very discouraging!
Acca sellowiana I have two of these, one is worse than the other, it looked so bad I cut it back drastically hoping it will leaf out lower on the branches and get full again. For now it's just sticks.
Metapanax delavayi has been dropping its leaves since late December; I can’t believe there are any left. The back 60% the plant is bare and the front half is hanging on to a few leaves.
Schefflera taiwaniana just a stick now. Dead, alive? I am not sure. My two Schefflera delavayi look grand.
Stachyurus salicifolius interestingly the pendulous blooms have not dropped, just the leaves. The blooms are however stuck, not getting bigger and showing no signs of opening. They’d normally be well on their way.
Corokia virgata 'Sunsplash' I have two of these, one of them dropped every leaf but does have tiny buds appearing.
Pseudopanax x 'Sabre' might be dead
Pseudopanax laetus might be dead
Several mahonia are now just sticks that might leaf out again at
some point: M. eurybracteata 'Cistus Silvers', M. x sevillana for example. Other mahonia suffered extreme foliage damage, among them: M. eurybracteata 'Soft Caress', M. oiwakensis, and this, M. x media 'Marvel'...
Podocarpus macrophyllus 'Miu' (Roman Candle variegated Podocarpus); the
bright yellow tip growth immediately turned brown after the December freeze, I
pruned that off and now the branches are browning further down and dropping foliage.
Cyrtomium fortunei fronds died back completely, no signs of new growth pushing out.
Pyrrosia damage is random around the garden, some are only lightly damaged and others completely killed back to the ground. They should (fingers crossed) rebound, achingly slow growth though. It will take years to achieve the sort of fullness they once had. Here's damage on a Pyrrosia sheareri. Some of the P. lingua damage took the form of completely light brown leaves.
Cheilanthes argentea was mostly eaten by a %@&* rabbit but
winter cold and wet finished it off—dead.
Pachysandra axillaris 'Windcliff Fragrant' damaged foliage
and bare stems on all three plants.
Aspidistra, both solid green and variegated/patterned plants were damaged. Some leaves completely straw colored (dead), others damaged to the point they were so ugly they had to be removed. Some only slight damage. Completely random across the garden. These leaves should be solid green.
Agaves dead (I’ve already went into great detail about many of these, so I’m skipping it this time, just the names ma’m)
Large: A. weberi, A. ‘Sharkskin’, A. americana variegata, A. salmiana var. ferox (2)
Small: A.parryi (2), A. ‘Blue Glow’, A. victoriae-reginae, A. × leopoldii, A.parisana 'Meat Claw', A. americana variegata, A. bracteosa (4), NOID misc (5)
Other plants that didn't fit in the catagories above
Echium wildpretii 3 plants dead.
Astelia 5 plants collapsed and leaves pull right out, dead.
Passiflora both P. 'Amethyst Jewel' and P. 'Snow Queen' fail the scratch test, no green wood. So sad.
Pachystegia insignis dead
Dianella (Clarity Blue) dead (2 plants)
Cordyline 'Cha Cha' and australis (several of both) are all killed to the ground, they’ve came back in the past when killed to the ground so it's likely they will again.
Trachycarpus fortunei 'Wagnerianus' both have suffered pretty serious damage to the fronds, broken right at the base so I’ve had to cut a lot of them off. These palms will look a little awkward for a while.
Yucca aloifolia ‘Blue Boy’ the center growing point rotted out on two plants, I've cut them down.
Tetrapanax papyrifer I’ve yet to see any sign of new growth pushing out from the growing point on my 8-ish plants. Of course they're tall so I can't really see what's going on up there, but I am worried.
I’m sure there will be more
A couple of unusual polygonatum I got from Far Reaches Farm last fall have yet to show themselves: P. vietnamicum and P. mengtzense. Taking photos for this post I stopped to look at this slice of the front garden and had to just laugh. A rotting opuntia, Agave ovatifolia with spots, there’s a mushy agave somesomething hidden in the juniper and then at the bottom a very sad Agave ocahui. Somehow, I’d missed all of this before. So it goes...
There are a couple positive surprises!
A reportedly hardy dwarf Billbergia nutans I bought from Evan is doing just fine. It was under frost cloth and plastic (protecting the nearby agave) for the December event, but weathered the snow and other cold with no protection. These will be interesting to watch.
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