How do you guard against winter plant damage in the yard? Besides winter lawn care considerations, the use of tree wrap and other measures can protect plants against wind damage and the other ravages brought by Old Man Winter. And mulch comes to the rescue in perennial flower beds -- as long as you use it properly. Below is a summary of what you need to do in fall in order to prepare your yard for winter.
Shrub Shelters That Guard Against Plant Damage in Winter
Most deciduous flowering shrubs, unlike their evergreen counterparts, provide little visual interest in winter. Yet these shrubs can be damaged by heavy snows or ice storms that snap their branches. To avoid such plant damage, you can build or buy a shelter within which to house your flowering shrubs for the winter. Since most of them provide little visual interest in winter anyway, you have little to lose by tucking them out of sight under a shelter.
You have two main options for providing deciduous shrubs with shelter:
- You can build shrub shelters out of natural materials.
- Or you can build an A-frame (or "snow frame") out of store-bought lumber.
Shelters come not only in various sizes, but also in various shapes and materials. But for all such shelters, you're essentially building a framework that will support a "roof"; the roof will keep excessive snow and ice off your shrubs. In my tutorial on winter shrub care, for example, I illustrate how to build a rectangular shelter with rustic poles, to be covered with pine boughs for roofing. This type of housing for your shrubs is made completely from natural materials that can be gathered for free, if you live in the country.
But shelters may also assume an inverted "V"-shape or a tepee shape; and as an alternative to rustic poles, the building material may also be lumber or metal. The inverted "V"-shape style (see picture, above right) sheds the snow and ice well. But besides the fact that you have to buy the materials, I don't like the look of it, personally. In addition, it would be difficult to fit such an A-frame over a large shrub.
Wind Damage: Tree Wrap and Other Measures to Take Against Winterburn
Unlike most deciduous shrubs, evergreen shrubs are the cornerstone of visual of interest on the winter landscape. Therefore, offering them winter protection similar to that suggested for deciduous shrubs is a hard sell, since the shelters mentioned obscure the plants.
Evergreen shrubs can, however, suffer injury during winter due to the harsh conditions, especially wind damage. For this reason, some people do protect their prized evergreen shrubs in winter, even though it ruins the visual display.
To protect evergreen shrubs from snow and ice, you can purchase commercial tree wraps. The tree wraps with which I am familiar are made of polypropylene netting and are available at local hardware stores. By wrapping plants with such tree wraps, their limbs are pulled in toward their trunks and supported, so that they won't snap under the strain of snow or ice loads.
But a bigger challenge for evergreen shrubs than snow and ice is presented by the drying winds of winter. Dwarf Alberta spruces and any newly planted evergreens are highly susceptible to such wind damage, so they should be protected. One way to help minimize wind damage to evergreen shrubs is to build a shelter around them to fend off the winds. Being a windbreak, this shelter differs from the type mentioned above for deciduous shrubs: the emphasis is on the sides, not the "roof."
The project begins by building a wire cage around the shrub. To build the wire cage, first secure 4 poles into the ground around the shrub, forming a rectangle. Then attach chicken wire to the poles, stretching it from pole to pole. When you're done building this structure, fasten burlap to its sides. The burlap will reduce the shrub's exposure to drying winds. Protecting evergreens from the wind in this way can minimize the moisture loss their leaves or needles suffer and help save them from what is termed, "winterburn."
An "anti-dessicant" (anti-drying agent) can also be sprayed on certain plants to reduce their susceptibility to drying wind damage. For instance, I use an anti-dessicant on my boxwood hedge. Apply in late fall, but before freezing temperatures settle in for good.
Warding Off Plant Damage in Advance: Fall Watering
If you wish to keep your evergreen shrubs "on display" during the winter, there is still some winter protection that you can afford them. But this winter protection is provided in advance, in the form of a proper watering regimen during the fall. This regimen applies as much to trees as it does to shrubs, and as much to deciduous specimens as to evergreens.
On Page 2, let's have a closer look at the proper watering regimen for trees and shrubs in fall....
