I have not had to winter protect too much here so I will let others comment about the plans for Nikko and F&E. Limelight sounds fine.

Instead of using temperatures to exactly let you know when to winter protect, I would let the plant "tell you" when it has gone dormant (when the leaves dry out). Once it has then winter protect. Watching the temperatures can be more difficult. Mother Nature can be fickle and not provide nights in the 20s exactly as you wish.

The warm weather that occurs in the middle of the winter could wake up plants if it lasts long enough but you would hope that "the insulation" that you are adding in terms of leaves will help keep the shrub dormant. The more leaves you can pile, the better.

Luis

Hi Kuriooo - My old Nikko is the only one I seriously winter protect, - altho all the old canes survived, only the center canes that sprouted from the ground, produced huge blossoms ... 'still an enigma to me. I'll still protect as I did & see what happens in '09

I'm posting photos of Nikko & others to show how I did mine. I used old bedsheet strips for strapping Nikko's 5' canes, mulched w/ pine needles around the base & wrapped w/ burlap, then built a cage out of 2.5'h plastic coated, garden wire fencing & dropped small bags of collected dry leaves. Since fence is shorter than canes, I tied the rest of the bags around & finally topped with a rose cone. I did all this is a span of several days leading up to real winter temps (we had a blizzard off the bat)! In my area Thanksgiving is our rule of thumb (rule for undressing is Mom's Day) don't worry about the fondly called 'Indian Summer'- Winter break, the plant won't know as they are kept in the dark! LOL

I only wrapped the cages w/ garden fab due to the wicked winds that whips around the backyard.

Here is a link that might be useful: Over-Wintering