{"id":11766,"date":"2008-12-23T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-13T18:59:21","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T22:59:21","slug":"snow-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardern.co.za\/2008\/12\/snow-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Snow White"},"content":{"rendered":"
This morning, we awoke to a Disney wonderland. These scenes remind me of the images one used to see in the vintage Viewmaster’s, technocolor snowscenes of National Parks and the like. OK…it was 6 below zero, and the ducks needed boiling water brought out to their hutch, and the squirrels were starving….but one cannot deny the beauty of a new, deep cover of fluffy snow. Natures mulch of deep snow is exactly what the garden needed, and although it arrived late, it arrived with perhaps enough time to curve the risk for deep frost which can permeate the soil when it is not covered. I was hoping for a deep snow like we had last year, which never melted until March -the perfect plant winter. Since many of us more intense gardeners like to experiment with plants from more tender zones, these deep snows raise the staked that we might be able to have zone 7 or zone 8 plants growing in a zone 5 or 6 garden. Often, the risk is not cold temperatures for many plants, it’s the thawing and freezing cycles, or moisture. Either way, my celebration on successfully overwintering Agapanthus and Kniphophia last year. Hopefully, the snow will last all winter, exactly what happens in the high alps and rockies. And exactly what the alpines need. Without snow, the troughs of alpine plants that spend the winter exposed to the elements can suffer, not from cold, but from ice, rain and the thawing and freezing cycles which never happens in their natural environment.
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Japanese Ardisia as a Holiday decoration.<\/p>\n