Blue Fescue is winterkilling? I thought it was pretty hardy. Get lots of snow on it? Only thing I did was put snow on the grasses. I also have variegated ribbon grass. I have also had good luck with Japanese Blood Grass in other yards I planted it in which is also considered zone 5.

It's zone 4..I lose lots of zone 4 stuff sooner or later. I think the other issue is that we have super heavy clay and if we get a dry year, the grass is happy, but in wet years it gets too waterlogged and probably weakens them, just in time for a bitterly cold winter with barely any snow. That's the other issue...the last few years we have got very little snow cover. I'm having to cover many plants with straw now, which I never had to do in the past! I covered all my grasses except the feather reed and foxtail grass with straw as well this past winter. And the roses, and the irises...I even covered my dang peonies because I lost a bartzella 2 winters ago (of all things) and that ain't cheap!

how cold did you get this winter?

I'm not sure..I know we broke some records near the end of Dec and again in Feb. Lots of mid minus 30's at night, not including windchill. And with no more than a couple inches of snow cover (less until the new year I believe). It was pretty brown here until March I think it was, when we got a little more snow. But I'm not sure what the lowest temps were. It was just very cold nights and days for days and weeks at a time with little snow to insulate!

We didn't have much either till about january and had the coldest snap with not much snow. But my deck is beside my grasses so I just piled all of the deck snow on them. Got probably 2 feet worth and worked great.

Ironically enough, I feel like my hard ground is forcing my trees to shut down earlier than they would if it was super nice top soil. I think its working to my benefit. They grow slower but don't grow late into October.

My young trees seemed to do fine this year, so maybe that helps me too. Also we were so dry, so a lot of trees shut down early. But a lot of my dwarf conifers show quite a bit of browning. Such bad windchills a lot of the winter!

Oddly, my Boyne raspberries are showing no signs of life at all! I'm assuming they'll come back from ground, but I'm not sure why they were hit so hard this winter.