This area has had more than it's share of landscape altering disasters. My gardens have never been devastated,but I've helped friends whose were. In 1996 Hurricane Fran came through Chapel Hill--and suddenly people who had tended shade gardens graced by massive oaks discovered that they could grow tomatos. (Or roses, or cosmos, or anything else that needed bright sunshine.)

First thing we had to do was triage--what was healthy, what was damaged but could come back, what was a total loss. Then we had to triage AGAIN--what would survive where it was--what needed to be moved? Luckily it was fall--a good time for shifting plants around. It was sad, but many folks WERE pleased when they realized that they COULD finally grow "tomatos."

The woods and undeveloped lots are still littered with the trunks and limbs of large trees--making all sorts of habitat for critters. The holes left by the rootballs make great nurseries for tadpoles--and, less happily, mosquitos. It looks pretty bleak in the winter, when all the leaves are off the underbrush and you can see the tree carcasses--but in the summer it's all covered--primarily with honeysuckle. NASTY invasive--but it sure smells good!

melanie

Does a 1998 Bay Area freeze that destroyed 60% of my garden four months before my move to San Diego count? A 23F low over a few nights is going to sound downright wimpy to y'all out East.

spectre

So you had less to move, spectre? I guess moving in itself constitutes a disaster of sorts for a garden - how did what was left fare in the moving? How did you move your plants?

Liked your tale of how you came to gardening on the "Genesis" thread - good writing. The therapeutic effects of gardening combined with a collector's enthusiasm - excellent recipe for the making of a committed gardener. Does your wife garden as well?

G.

Ginger:

Thanks for the props. Since the garden was one of the selling points of the house, I rushed out to nurseries over a couple of weekends the following February and bought bullet-proof, everyday (for NoCal) plants to help cover the bare spots and contribute to the subtropical look of the garden like fatsia, viburnum, and euryops. I went back this past Thanksgiving to check the garden out over the fence and many of the freeze-damaged plants (like the giant bird of paradise I mentioned in the "Genesis" thread) are 10' tall. The only plants that moved with us were in containers.

The answer to your last question is an emphatic yes. Since she's from the tropics, I have a harder time trying to keep her temperate plant wants (like, yechhhhh, roses) in check. The only plant she's still not keen on are bananas because the leaves get shredded. It's much like Roberto Burle Marx who didn't discover the floral treasures his native South America produced until he saw them in a German greenhouse.

spectre

Well Spectre, your right about the 23F. Sounds toasty. =)
Actually, dare I say it hasn't been bad this week. We got to upper 30's. Ohhhh. Of course, we are going to pay for that on Sunday with the average high only planning on being around 7F! Yuck. Is winter over yet???
And so Spike doesn't erase for off topic, I guess I've faired fairly well as far as weather goes. A few harsh winters, ice storms, early fall temps, drought here and there, wind storms, scattered monsoons. Yup! Faired pretty well. lol

I am hoping to restore from my disaster - we had a house fire in November, and between the firefighters and now the destruction/ construction crews, my flowerbeds are pretty much toast.
I would have dug everything up, but up here in Alaska, it's a wee bit cold this time of year, so digging isn't possible yet.
I'm hoping that my delphiniums, roses, and blue poppies are more resilient than I would have thought.

If I lived nearby I would gladly give you all sorts of divisions and seedlings from my gardens. Do you have like-minded neighbors with gardens, Lissa? Hope you do.

Blue poppies in Alaska? There is apparently an area here in the NH mountains that has the right conditions for growing the poppies, but no where else. I wonder if they are a variety that actually will do well after a burn? How many do you have?

Do you have to do anything to the soil to repair damage done by the fire itself or water, heavy equipment, etc.?

Ginger

Ginger, three years ago, we had a 1-acre pond dug on the front of our property. There was a great deal of excess soil, which we used to build a 6-7' berm (400 feet long) that curves along the side of our property.

Heavy earthmoving machinery devastated the soil along a path between the pond the berm. I doubted that anything would ever grow there again. The double-tracks were about 4-feet wide (each) which essentially resembled 6" deep swales.

Two years later, when this photo was taken, you could still see the tracks. But, freeze & thaw cycles mostly restored the soil. Today, I doubt that you could find where the machinery traveled. What did I do to refurbish it? Not a thing. Didn't know what to do!!

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1186419}}

And yet...the tracks the wagons made as they headed west on the Oregon trail are still visible, even today.

melanie

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1186420}}

Larry-
Nature often heals itself.
Your photography is always so beautiful.

Mel-
After all these years and still visible-quite amazing!

G.

We have a creek at the back end of the garden. With torrential rains a common thing here we get every few years an extra big flash flood that can devistate the lower garden. the first time it happened I was disturbed that my plants had been ruined or carried away. Now I know that it is natures cycle so I replant with this in mind. Best to plant herbaceous tropicals like Heliconias that will be knocked down but will grow back up. things look bare for a while but thngs green up pretty quickly. If the hundred year flood comes I may end up without a home and I won't need the garden anymore.

Melanie:
I've walked in the still visible tracks of the Oregon Trail -- but you can only do that in a land of little rain.

Lissa - My sympathies on your fire. A neighbor of mine lost her 200 year old farm house to fire January of last year,and will move into her new house next month. When things thawed, many of her bulbs and shrubbery were not in bad shape and were transplanted before work began on rebuilding. (She didn't have many perennials.) For you, if everything was frozen and has been frozen, what wasn't actually burned or thawed by the fire or dug up by the work crews may still be there and alive. Wait until spring comes before you give up hope on your garden entirely. Often times logging with heavy machinery is done here during the winter, and come spring you can hardly tell that the log trucks and skidders were driving over the ground because the frozen surface helped protect the plants.