Winter Burn damage 2022/23

As many of you have noticed in your own yards or around town, we have significant damage on many broadleaf evergreens from the extreme flash freeze & high winds at Christmas. Most of the damage appears as browning or blackening but there is also leaf drop occurring on shrubs like hollies.

So, what to do? Prevailing knowledge from the experts is to let everything be for now. As March & April approach, watch your plants as they begin to sprout out.  Shrubs may need to have damage pruned out. Use your fingernail to do the scratch test on the branches to see how far back to prune.  

Evergreens showing damage: acuba, azalea, boxwood, camellias, cryptomeria, laurel, nandina, false holly, holly, mahonia, leyland cypress, etc.     We can probably guess that crape myrtles will have damage too. Be patient with them, it may take them well into May to start leafing out.

What about our perennials? The experts are guessing since the extreme cold was brief, our perennials will be fine. I don’t know about you, but I have hellebores & daffodil foliage happily popping up everywhere!

If you do lose a shrub, think about replacing it with a native and have fun “redecorating” that area!

False Holly or Osmanthus, normally has lovely variegated leaves.