Winter weather

PDN greenhouses winter 2015

We hope you’re enjoying winter, where ever you might be reading this.  If you live near Boston…skip this section. Our winter in NC started out cold, then moderated during January, followed by an unusually late February blast of arctic air.

Front grotto ice 2015

While we’ve not been as cold as last winter, our cold has come much later.  This year, we’ve had five days after the end of January when the temperatures dropped below 20 degrees F.  Last year, we had one.  Our 9 degree F low last night was the latest recorded date for us to drop into the single digits since we began keeping records in 1978.

Front grotto ice2 2015

If all the plants make it through another night in the teens F tonight, temperatures should start to moderate as we approach March and our Winter Open Nursery and Garden

Front grotto walk with ice

Winter precipitation offers us so much opportunity to learn by carefully observing.  Here is an image of our front grotto walk today.  You can see which areas warm first and which areas stay cooler longer.  Understanding and locating these microclimates can be very helpful in siting marginal or difficult to grow plants that require more exacting conditions.

Finally, our thoughts are with our friends at the SC Botanical Garden in Clemson as they recover from the Monday freezing rain/ice storm that sent 200 trees in the garden toppling over on their way to the giant mulch pile in the sky.  Hang in there, folks!

 

7 thoughts on “Winter weather”

  1. We have experienced much the same weather pattern you describe in Alabama. Wondering how this will affect cherry trees and spirea which have already opened some blooms, as well as jonquils which were 5″ up. Fear my late-blooming “black” sasanqua won’t be doing any blooming this year.
    Thank you for the micro-climate observation. I had never thought of the melting patterns in that regard.

  2. I can sympathize with SC. I remember the surprise October snow storm we got here in Buffalo and how so many trees broke or fell. You can still see the scars on some trees as others show bent branches that continue to grow in that position. You guys are lucky that you haven’t receive any worse weather and I hope you never do.

  3. Karla S. Jenkins

    I feel your pain. Last year we in Iowa were in the same boat as you are this year. We (nearly state wide) definitely discovered knock out roses aren’t as cold hardy as once thought due to the extremely harsh winter the mid west endured last year. It nearly perfectly mirrored the winter you are experiencing this year.

  4. We live in NW Florida and our bottle brush trees have had a hard time two winter in a row (last year was the worst). There’s always at least one that freezes completely but comes back up from the ground in the Spring. We love them for the bees, butterflies and hummers they bring but I guess we shouldn’t have planted them. Too late now. Sigh..

  5. We hit 5.5 F in Orange County, near Hillsborough, according to my thermometer–half a degree lower than last year’s minimim. I think my figs have frozen to the ground for the second year in a row, and the gardenias will probably look bad in a week or so. I built a cage around my windmill palm and filled it with wood chips, so hopefully that helped a bit.

    I’m a bit worried that the extended freeze has reached some of my buried crinums, cannas, and Musa velutina. We’ll see in April, I guess. The Musa has been in the ground since 2001.

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