Winter Care for Evergreen Trees and Shrubs

If you have boxwoods, yews, or cedar trees, winter maintenance is vital to ensure that these shrubs and trees remain healthy over the winter months. After spending money and time resources planting and caring for your plants, the last thing you want is for them to die.

In the below sections we will provide you with some tips and tricks for keeping your evergreens healthy in cold climates.

Most evergreen trees and shrubs such as yews, boxwoods, and cedars are highly susceptible to wind burn during the winter seasons in North America. This will result in your evergreens turning brown in the winter. In the fall these species will begin to go dormant. Leading up to the winter these plants will uptake enough water and nutrients to keep them alive until spring.

What does winter damage look like for Boxwoods, Yews, and Cedar Trees?

How to prevent winter damage?

Preventing winter damage to your boxwoods, yews, and cedar trees is very easy and should be part of your yearly fall landscaping regime. We like to employ a three step approach (1) water heavy in the month of October (2) apply fertilizer spikes at the beginning of October, and (3) wrap your plants up before the snow falls.

Watering leading up to the winter is very important. Once winter arrives, the ground will freeze and therefore it will be impossible for your evergreen shrubs and trees to uptake water. Watering before the winter freeze will ensure that your cedars, yews, and boxwoods have a full belly before they go into hibernation mode in the winter.

Fertilizing your boxwoods, yews, and cedar trees before the winter is also important. This is not vital, but, applying a pre-winter fertilizer will ensure that your trees have an energy boost in the spring once the ground thaws again. We love to use fertilizer spikes for our cedar trees and a granular fertilizer for our shrubs. The plants that we fertilize before winter always wake up healthy and green-up a lot faster in the spring.

Last and most IMPORTANT, is to wrap your boxwoods, yews, and cedar trees. This can be done with burlap. We like burlap because it is cheap, breathable, and can be reused year after year. The burlap is vital for your plants health. Yews, Boxwoods, and Cedar trees are susceptible to windburn during the winter months. Windburn will scorch the leaves of these plants and once dead they likely never come back.

If you follow the above steps your plants will be healthy and vibrant come spring. We often hear horror stories from our customers on how they have had their evergreens turn brown in the winter, and the one thing that they have in common is not following the appropriate winter care steps.

If you have any questions or comments about landscaping, maintenance, or purchasing flowers from Greenhouse to Garden, we are here to help.

For those of you new to our website, Greenhouse to Garden is a full service Garden Centre located in Vaughan (Kleinburg) Ontario. We pride ourselves on customer service and growing the best plants in the area. Our team at Greenhouse to Garden has decade’s worth of gardening knowledge and we are always happy to help you out. If you are in need of plants or gardening help come by our Garden Centre in Vaughan. We won’t disappoint!

DID YOU KNOW: Greenhouse to Garden provides flower delivery in Vaughan and surrounding Greater Toronto Area (GTA).