By Sasha Kodet. Protect your garden from a cold snap and keep backyard wildlife cozy with careful landscape design.
Sweater weather is here! Wrapped in layers with a warm mug of apple cider in hand, you may have begun surveying your backyard and pondering plans for your landscape. Dressing it in layers can help create a more resilient, wildlife-friendly backyard. Incorporate these lessons learned from recent winter freezes to make your Texas landscape even tougher.
Cultivate Resilience
Work with nature to create a multi-layered gardening approach that benefits you and the larger community.
- Plant for biodiversity. A rich variety of plants keeps your yard looking great year-round and is key to a great wildlife garden that supports local and migrating wildlife. Massed plantings are a common and beautiful design principle but relying on one plant species could leave a big hole in your landscape that’s expensive to replace.
- Choose native plants. Our tough regional plants are more likely to take droughts and freezes in stride. A diverse mix of native plants require much less water and provide for wildlife all year, too.
- Layer your landscape. Use trees, shrubs, perennials and groundcovers to provide safe nesting spaces and food. The right plants keep wildlife cozy in winter. Remember, evergreens are the sweaters of the landscape.
- Mulch for healthy soils. I’m a lazy gardener, so I rake a reasonable layer of leaves into my landscape beds to keep over the winter. Then I add a layer of mulch over them in spring which helps hold moisture in the soil and freshens the look.
- Try “green mulch.” Plant densely instead of using wood chips. Mimic natural communities for an adapted yet artful look.
- Know your microclimates. Check plant tags at the garden center to see if it grows in sun or shade, but also consider which direction it’s facing, nearby windbreaks, heat-holding stones and slope. Protected locations helped many plants survive last February.
Lessons From Extreme Weather
In San Antonio, we’re able to enjoy a wide selection of plants from cacti and succulents to semi-tropical bloomers and palms. Many plants bounce back promptly after brief cold snaps, but the deep freeze of 2021 reminded us that others can be damaged by extreme weather. You may be able to cultivate them in your yard during warm winters but be prepared to potentially replace them after a lengthy freeze.
Keepers:
- Native plants. All of my native plants made it through the bitter weather in 2021, including those I had planted in early November.
- Rosemary. Upright rosemary seemed to fare better than prostrate rosemary. I lost mine but I heard others’ plants did fine.
- Esperanza. The outstanding bright yellow bells recovered as usual. Plant away.
Plant With Care:
- Citrus such as Meyer lemon, Mexican lime and even Satsuma (the most cold tolerant) are sensitive. Consider using containers that can easily be moved indoors or keep in mind planting them outdoors may mean a loss.
- Many palms did not survive the freeze of 2021, including many date, jelly and Mexican fan palms. Other species, such as windmill, European and California fan palms took the spring and summer to recover. Sabal species, Reborn Sago including the Texas native Sabal mexicana, scoffed at the freeze — many didn’t even drop leaves.
- Some sago palms slowly unfurled new leaves and others eventually recovered from the base but endured. The fact their seeds are toxic may sway your opinion on whether to use these cycads in the home landscape.
For more post-freeze plant recommendations, winter landscaping lessons and tips for resiliency, visit GardenStyleSanAntonio.
Sasha Kodet
Sasha Kodet is a conservation planner whose large garden attracts a myriad of wildlife and curious neighbors with minimal water. At SAWS, Kodet develops outdoor programs to help people create their own beautiful, water-saving landscapes. She draws on her two decades of experience as a naturalist, botanical garden educator and event planner. Kodet enjoys (really) long walks in the woods and has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and the Long Trail.
