Spring's Promise & Winter's Victims

Such an odd spring. Just when you think you are high and safe on a wave of warmth, another northern front rolls in that plunges nights into the forties with some days barely climbing out of the fifties. Everything got off to such a slow start, but at last some lushness is starting to fill the yard.
And amid the lushness of late spring, a final tally of the casualties of winter. Now barren spots in the greenery make it clear which plants did not survive this past winter, which, ironically enough, was for the most part a warmer than normal one. But that warmth, which caused hellebores, witch hazels, quince and camellias to bloom in early January, must have also fooled other less stout garden members into breaking dormancy early in the year. And then came the bitter, colder than average late February that cut them down to death. Particularly affected were many fleshy bulbs of tropical descent that previously had no trouble surviving the past seven years in my garden – the Hedychium ginger, Sauromatum venosum voodoo lilies, and Eucomis pineapple lilies are all gone. Even the Musa basjoo banana tree, which previously had been growing and spreading like a weed and would have been a four feet high by four feet wide shrub by now, seems like it barley pulled through; it is just now sending some thin sickly shoots up from the earth.
All of these fatalities correspond with a report from Sherwood Gardens, an expanse of azaleas and spring bulbs in the otherwise sterile north Baltimore Gucci neighborhood of Guilford, that about 30% of the planted tulip bulbs did not flower. When the failed beds were dug up, mushy rotted bulbs were found – victims of a warm winter with a freezing finale.
I even had to say farewell to some work horse salvias that for many years had been staples of the garden, particularly Greggii “Watermelon” and “Royal Raspberry,” which revealed green signs of life when their bare branches were scraped with a finger nail, but failed to sprout any new growing points from the old wood.
But there was virtually no damage with the larger shrubs and trees. The pomegranate, Punica granatum “State Fair,” had insignificant die back and has jumped to vigorous life and is larger than ever this year. The brown turkey fig, which usually needs its tips pruned back to green wood in the spring, had no die back this year.
But at last the warmth is here and on we go. Just too bad that we’re ultimately headed back to winter in a mere five months…