Now that most of the snow is melted it’s time to have a good look at the garden and assess the damages.
There aren’t really any surprises. Most of the damage was done by the very cold temperatures on Dec 19th (10.4F) and Dec 20th (4.1F)
Among the casualties:
I don’t know if the euphorbia will recover. The jerusalem sage probably will. When I first got it I planted it in one of the exposed beds by the driveway. It die back that winter with a low of about 20F. I moved it up into a bed close to the house and it has been fine for the last two years. But even the shelter of the house won’t save something from the kind of lows we had.
Surprisingly little damage was done to the garden by the snow load. One of the butterfly bushes got broken. Mostly my fault because I didn’t cut them back in the fall. Still they are tough as nails and even the snow couldn’t do the sort of damage a couple of panicked sheep can do. (Long story — no pics sorry)
On the other hand this weeping cypress was utterly and repeated buried by snow plumetting off of the roof. Amazing.
Somethings survived both the snow load and the freezing temps amazingly well.
I’m not surprised by the mint — it’s stuck in the washtub for a reason — containment! The sage on the other hand, I expected to turn to mush long before the temps got anywhere near as cold as it was.
And then there’s the damage that the snow and ice did to the gutters. We tacked them back up as best we could but it wasn’t always a enough to keep the rain and snow melt moving along the drainage system and not plashing down into the gardens. (Also note that the frost heave brought all of the landscape lighting wires back to the surface. )
All-in-all not nearly as bad as I expected. It will be interesting to see how many of the perenials come back this spring and which ones go mysteriously missing.
