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Escallonia – A Winter Surprise
Posted on 
February 3rd, 2009 by 
julian
Everyone knows that escallonia hedges get badly frostbitten. I mean everybody. Every book you read says that Escallonia are rather tender plants. Every list of plants that “only grow in the south-west” (it used to be “in the Scillies”) contains Escallonia. I even read an article in a reputable gardening magazine that suggested you cover your escallonia with horticultural fleece. So you would think that the recent freeze would have made your escallonia red raw with cold.
Far be it from me to argue with a professional, but they are obviously wrong. As long as drainage is adequate (we are on fairly heavy soil that seems to be OK) that is – they will have hated being waterlogged over the last few weeks. Our escallonia hedge – which is about 2.5 metres tall and which is a windbreak has now been through the really bad freeze that happened for about 10 days after Christmas. I checked it out carefully about a week ago, and there was a tiny bit of bronzing of a few leaves but apart from that it looked great. The coldest it took was -11C and there was quite a bit of wind chill as well.
Now we have had two days of snow and I will report later on what has happened – but I am enormously confident that our hedge will be just fine.
By way of supporting evidence, the smaller escallonia hedge plants on the nursery (which is 300 feet higher above sea level than home) are looking fantastic. Not a brown leaf amongst them. So maybe Ashridge Trees has accidentally stumbled upon a strain of fully hardy escallonia. We would love to tell you it was so, but since it applies to escallonia red, white and pink: to Escallonia Donard Seedling as much as it does to Escallonia macrantha rubra or Escallonia Apple Blossom, I suspect that what has happened over the years is that escallonia has acclimatised somewhat. Not so much to the cold – it was always pretty hardy actually, but to the damp which it is supposed to hate. Nevertheless, if you happen to think we may have super-plants, you can find our unguaranteed-but-strongly-suspected-to-be-frost-hardy escallonia hedge plants here.
Watch your garden grow and enjoy.
Tags: Escallonia
3 Responses to “Escallonia – A Winter Surprise”
February 10th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Here here – we have lived in Cornwall for 15 years and the freeze this new year was the worst we have had – we recorded -9C. Just wanted to say that our escallonia looks as good as it ever did at this time of year.
Jane
August 31st, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I have a tall overgrown Escallonia hedge which is full of dead wood in the centre and sparse down the bottom. I would like to cut this right back to almost ground level to enable it to start again. Can you advise me if it is ok to do this and when is the best time of year. Also what to do after this hard prune to make sure I have a consistant thick hedge all the way up. I would appreciate your advisw. Thank you.
Elaine
September 1st, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Thank you for your query
I would be a bit nervous about cutting back established escallonia hedge plants too severely – they ought to survive but larger plants can suffer from shock if treatment is too rough.
Instead try an interimiate step – in Spring, prune your escallonia hedging back to a framework of branches. You can still be harsh – the hedge may well be leafless when you have finished, but this ought to encourage plenty of new, bushy growth within a few weeks. If that does not solve the problem, you can then consider even more savage pruning knowing that you have little to lose if the plants die.
Hopefully this answers your question, but please let me know if I can help any further.