Yup, Thyme is pretty hardy here even with negative temps. Chives, Mints, Oregano, Catnip and Lemon Balm survive, too, but not Rosemary. I have yet to see if some Lavender purchased from a local nursery will make it with some mulch and a thick layer of snow.
I hope your Rosemary makes it. A wonderful plant to have! I haven't been able to overwinter it since moving from zone 7 several years ago.

I live in Western NY State and this is the second winter with some thyme I direct sowed into the garden bed. I got to say it has all around performed better for me than any nursery bought thyme plant. Sometimes there is nothing like starting and growing plants from seed in situ.

Unlike lavender and thyme, I can't get rosemary to overwinter here. Even the ones that are supposed to be hardy. Ah well, there is enough other things that do overwinter to keep me happy. :)

FataMorgana

My rosemary is always grown from primed seeds and they get started in late March, and transplanted into the herb area the end of May. Primed seeds do germinate much more reliably compared to regular seeds. I do hope to try and get some oregano started from seeds. I thought one of the thyme plants was oregano, but it just didn't happen. It may be my old oregano seeds are just too old to sprout. Wild onions chives that I have right now, could be harvested now, as they are only growing greens in winter time. Next to them is garlic grass and those are sleeping now.

The only thing I have found with wintering thyme is other than snow it really does not like to have mulch on its leaves all winter. I allow single leaves to stay if they do not push the thyme down. This allows me to have green thyme for cooking all winter. The plants with no leaves develope a reddish color and have a stronger flavor that goes well in chicken stew or soup but for regular cooking I find the green is better. This was planted as an english thyme about 10+ years ago and almost covers a 6 foot slope.

I have three other thymes, including a very fine leafed gray that do well but look desicated during the winter so I do not cut.

I don't know what kind of Thyme I have. It has purple flowers. When DH and I first moved to the area we rented an old farmhouse about 30 miles north of where we are now. The landlord kept a large area mowed and I kept seeing patches of purple off in the distance between his house and ours. When I investigated, it turned out to be patches of Thyme. I transplanted a few clumps closer to the house(it probably started out there way back when)and when we moved a bit farther south(to an apartment)I brought a clump with me and planted it in the raised bed off the parking lot since it already had chives growing out of control. Since then I've cleaned up the chives and planted other herbs. My latest is a small nursery bought Marjoram(to hopefully bring in bees). It's all under a foot of snow now, but I hope it will pull through. I started some Garlic Chives and only one lonely start was alive at the end of the season, poor thing, hopefully there will be more sprouting in the spring also.

For garlic chive, you can help them sprout more, by removing the black seeds in fall, and planting them nearby the plant. Years ago, I started garlic chives from seed in one area, and moved it all to another area It took quite a while to 'get used to' the new area, but is now doing well. The garlic chive likes growing in small clumps. As to Marjorum, I doubt if it will return, mine didn't. Last spring I also planted some tarragon plants, which were supposed to be the French type (from Gurney's). They had nearly no smell or flavor, so I think they were fakes. They too will probably not grow again, although the real thing does sprout new shoots the next year as my original one did. I read someplace that Tarragon has only a 2 year lifespan. Bees here are not very plentiful. I need tem to pollinate my fruit trees. What I did was buy some orcahrd mason bees and these are very early bees that wil get to spring blossoms. They are non aggressive and live in 6 inch long tubes about 3/16 inch in diameter. I have several places where I set up these kinds of housing so the bees have someplace to lay their eggs and continue each year. By the end of June, they are usually back in the tubes waiting for the following year. The 'Mason' comes from the fact that they use some mud to plug up the openings in the tubes once the eggs ae layed. The bees are nearly all black in color.

I've noticed the lack of bees in this area also. I can't remember the last time I saw a Honey Bee and the Bumblies are few and far between. Most of the pollination in the raised bed here seems to be done by the smaller guys, wasps, flies and the like. When we left Western Washington bees were still fairly plentiful. I had Marjoram growing next to Lavender and the Marjoram was always covered in Honeys,while the Lavender was covered in Bumblies. We had Carpenter Bees trying to tunnel into one of our sheds so we hung sections of logs that were drilled out under the eaves for them. When we left that fall, there were quite a few holes plugged up. Bees are so cool to watch...I miss'em!

It is amazing what not using pesticides and having "wild" areas around your property will do for increasing pollinator numbers to your gardens. The previous owners kept the open areas farmed or bush-hogged and used chemical pesticides in gardens. We don't do that. We leave parts of our property wild and generally avoid pesticides. Over the years the pollinators have increased not only in number but in variety. We have bees, butterflies, and so many others.

If you don't have room for wild areas, even lawns can be bee friendly places, dutch white clover and bird's foot trefoil are pretty additions to lawns that bees absolutely love. Broadleaf weedkillers usually kill these out of lawns and make lawns into wastelands for pollinators.

FataMorgana

This is the first year I put my thyme's in the ground. I grew just two...lemon and English. They are both still doing well, despite temp's dropping into the teens with wind chills way below that. Surprisingly, even my cilantro, which I kept from bolting all season by constantly cutting it back, is still green in patches. It had some yellow leaves here and there, and some that have suffered from frost, but for the most part, it's fine. Surprised me.

This year, I decided to leave my rosemary outside. The man who's backyard faces ours has a rosemary plant in the ground and it did well, despite some snow we had last year. Sure, some leaves did turn brown on it, but for the most part, the entire plant still was good enough to harvest from and bounced back the next season.

I'm happy to say the 5 rosemary bushes I have are doing well so far also. One is a bush I took from my father's house I gifted to him, but I'm sorry to have to say he passed away this past November. He did love it so much because he knew how much I loved rosemary and I cooked with it so much. I visited him every Thursday and my partner and I did every other Sunday for the day and dinner. Since the house has been vacant (we lost my mother in 2005 to her third cancer), the plant needed care it wasn't getting, so I brought it back home and am nursing it back to health. It's a little scragglier than my others, but I think it will be fine. Needless to say, it's very special to me.

Because one of the folklores of rosemary is symbol of remembrance, I buried him with three sprigs of it in his hand, one for each of us children.