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Saturday 19 June 2010

new beginnings?

in this weather it's hard to believe that quite a long and for us very cold winter isn't all that far behind us. but we still see the results everywhere in our garden. quite a few of our hedge plants weren't fully hardy - so we had no choice but to cut most of them down to the ground. we used the "freeze-dried" stuff for heating, but we have large holes in our shelter all around.
luckily not all is lost - some of the plants are gone; no new growth until now means they're gone for good. but most are bouncing back, here is one of my escallonia plants that formed a nice green hedge around our veggie plot. most of the plants are sprouting like mad and we can only hope that the next winter won't cut all that new growth back to ground level - again!
other plants looked tattered and browned for some time - but they also come back into form and I am hopeful that they will recover soon. the question now: should I remove the old leaves? will the branches stay bare at the bottom if I do? trial and error - but I think I'll leave this one alone for now. there's plenty of other work just now and if the dry spell continues I can spend a few hours each day just with watering - weird times!

2 comments:

Delighted Hands said...

We are having the same dilemna over several plants......then they surprise you with growth just when you decide to cut them down! Amazing recovery abilities!

Leigh said...

Wow, I love the new look of your blog! If the old leaves are dead, I would probably cut them off. If they're still alive, I'd probably wait. I do hope they all make a good recovery.