GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

K · 01-01-2010, 12:09 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening

writes
In article ,
Rusty Hinge wrote:

If we go back to the hard winters we used to have here, 20-30 years
ago, I may well lose it, but it doesn't mind -10 Celsius or the soil
freezing to the depth of an inch or so.

No reason why - our bay trees were originally planted at the end of the
first world war, and they were still there last time I looked.

They were killed in 1962-3 near Salisbury, and used to get killed in
the 1970s and 1980s in Cambridge (mostly pot-planted ones, true).
My experience is that their top growth is killed by sustained cold
(say, -15 at night and -5 during the day), and that only the best-
established plants will regrow from their roots after their top
growth is killed, at least if the ground froze to some depth. My
mother's large ones (Salisbury) didn't resprout until 1964 (sic).

When we moved into our house in 1990, the previous owner told us that
the bay tree outside the library window was regularly cut down by the
frost. But since then, winters have been a lot milder, so it basically
kept growing until we finally removed it (1) to make way for the fig
that we had to move to make way for the new porch ...

gardening can be so complicated sometimes!

(1) We still had two other bay tree elsewhere in the garden.
--
Kay