Last night we had a bad storm roll through: about half an hour of heavy rain (approx 1 inch of rain in that half an hour), high winds, and some pebble sized hail. Not as bad as it could be, I’ve been through far worse, but pretty intense for a brief while.

Well, apparently, it was intense enough to take out most of a clethra I have planted in my rain garden. This clethra went in last November and was doing so well. It even had nascent flower buds (I was able to find two yesterday Morning when I looked. Yesterday! Not even 12 hours before the storm came through!). Four of the five stems were severed right at the base. Only one stem is left standing.

I know this is a tough native, so I hope it’ll recover and send up new shoots from the base.

But it feels rather unstable now. Do you think I should stake it for the rest of this summer?