Winter protection
20.12.2007 03:06
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- Source: Home Envy
Nicole Kidman could make a burlap wrap look good, but I'm not sure how flattering it is on an eastern white pine. But cast your eyes on gardens in the city and country and notice how many trees and shrubs are sporting burlap coats. Are people coddling their conifers just a bit too much? I thought so, but Jim Lounsbery set me straight. Lounsbery is a nurseryman and owner of Vineland Nurseries in Vineland and Manager of Horticultural Studies at Mohawk College, Hamilton. He could sell bark to a lumberjack, he is just that wild about trees and shrubs. "Wrapping is especially beneficial for plants that were planted late in the fall," says Lounsbery, naming evergreens, rhododendrons and Japanese maples as candidates for a burlap wrap. "We've had such weird weather, even if evergreens get a lot of moisture in the fall, a severe winter like last year can dry them out," he says. First year protection is prudent according to Lounsbery, because evergreens continue to lose water through their needles during the winter. That process is intensified by high winter winds. With their roots frozen in the soil, the tree is unable to replace the lost water. The result is foliage brown as bacon. A newly planted Japanese maple and the luscious rhododendron also would benefit from the cozy protection of a burlap wrap. "It's up to the individual, but after the first year I would want to take the burlap off. It's ugly and really you want to see the winter form of the plant." Those nubby burlap coats also give evergreens protection from salt which causes drying and browning of foliage. "It's also a matter of planting things in the right place," says Lounsbery. "If you can give the more susceptible evergreens protection from prevailing winter winds, that helps so much, rhododendrons too. Otherwise you have to ask yourself do you really want to take the time to wrap these plants severy winter?" I know I wouldn't. I hate wrapping Christmas presents, let alone a Chamaecyparis nootkatensis. But some gardeners, after picking up their burlap at a garden centre or hardware store, do a meticulous job of stitching together a coat that outline the silhouette of the tree or shrub perfectly. But there is something ghostly about these brown gnomes in the landscape. There's a group of them along the QEW in Burlington that looks like an image from Mars. An alternative to the burlap shroud is the burlap screen. Put a group of stakes in the ground, wrap the burlap around them and you have a fabric screen or box to protect the plant from wind and salt and with the top left open, air and light can reach the plant. Another sorry sight in the winter landscape is the forlorn skyrocket juniper with its tip jammed against the eaves of the house and the rest of it wrapped in binder twine. This is another case of the wrong plant in the wrong place. The twine is a feeble attempt at protecting the junipers branches from being wrenched to the ground by ice and snow. A proper pruning regimen could help prevent some of these crimes against conifers. A splendid source about evergreens and the winter garden is at the GardenWeb conifer forum on the internet. If you log on to the forums at www.gardenweb.com you can actually read fascinating discussions about the evergreens seen in the forest scenes in the movie Cold Mountain. Which brings us right back to Nicole Kidman and how she could even make burlap look good in the woods of Romania.
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