What do you find if you dig one up? Is the soil dry at depth? Are the roots healthy? Mulching won’t help with drying out unless the soil is moist when you put the mulch down.

Btw This isn’t a plant which strikes me as ever needing fertilising if grown in the ground.

They looked good until we got blasted with cold temps in the winter (we live 30 minutes northwest of Philadelphia, PA). The only causes I can think of are not feeding in the fall and not watering during dry spells in the winter.

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i dont understand the above.. you know exactly when they started looking bad.. dismiss it.. then talk about other variables ...

plants in gods green earth.. mostly never 'need' fert ... a little of this or that wont hurt ... but this has nothing to do with missing a supplemental fert application ..

what is the tree.. how hard was it to dig holes under ... how bad is root competition? .... how hard to it to properly keep plants watered under it ... did the plants go into winter stressed due to lack of water???

up here in winter country ... all ground cover can look ratty after winter.. especially if there is no reliable snow cover to protect them ... otherwise healthy plants can recover.. no matter how ugly they get.. as long as a leaf is green ... it can process light into energy.. even if damaged.... let spring continue.. and lets hope they start growing and looking better ...

shall we presume nothing was sprayed on the lawn.. and might have drifted over???

ken

Thanks for your responses! The soil is damp and cool but I haven’t yet dug one up yet-that will be on my agenda tomorrow and will get back to you :-). They are under a large white pine tree-there are a lot of roots but it wasn’t too hard to find space to put about 30 of them
Around the tree. Some are thriving and others as shown In the photos. I stopped watering them when it got colder, maybe in November? I am unfortunately less diligent in the colder weather with watering. On the other side of the fence we did have lawn treatment through the fall but it wasn’t likely near that vicinity as that area is very rocky with little grass/weed growth and is downhill from the tree. Still a possibility for those plants on that side not doing well, but likely doesn’t explain those on the backyard side (we don’t treat lawn In the fence bc of kids/dog).I will have to check with lawn people to stay away from plants....All good factors that I have to think of, including the long winter.

where are you .. big city name ... this defines what if any water is necessary in winter ..

i had a line of white pines.. and NOTHING grew under them.... and i tried for 10 years ...

do you rake the pine needles out every year.. and then buy mulch???? .. some might suggest you are raking up free mulch and replacing it with a purchased mulch ...

ken

Don’t do anything for a couple more weeks. You are in zone 6/5 which means that things are still sprouting. Depending on conditions, you may have a spot that is , in essence, a micro climate and is different from the rest of your yard. Additionally, different hosta cultivars sprout at different times. I am in roughly the same zone and some of my hostas as are up 3-4 inches and others have yet to come up.

In my experience the old adage about perennials— “first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap” —holds true especially for pachysandra. Patience will be rewarded! Turn your attention to another project.

A few don't look too good. Did you buy them? Sometimes the rooted cuttings sold around here aren't well enough rooted to make it through the winter, and even if they do they then take a couple years before developing a root system with the runners which give you a groundcover effect. In my experience the best way to establish pachysandra is planting a couple shovelfuls of the tangled rooty mess which you beg off of a friend. Even without top growth a healthy bunch of roots will resprout new shoots and establish quickly.

I don't think we've ever watered or fertilized our pachysandra. You're probably a zone warmer and a bit dryer than here (I guessed King of Prussia for zone and average precipitation), but I wouldn't expect it to be enough for tons of watering to be necessary under normal conditions, but you have them under a pine tree. Not much grows under our white pine trees ... ours are large and come down pretty low, creating deep shade beneath them, which would be too dark for pachysandra ... how big and low is your pine?

Our pachysandra only get the ferns yanked out of them on occasion but otherwise fend for themselves.

Wouldn’t being blasted by cold temperatures cause them to “melt”?

debra

We are outside of Philadelphia 15 minutes from King of Prussia, in Ambler.I dug some of them from a deserted park/woods with tons of them, and bought the rest. Maybe I need to find more in the woods, LOL. The pachysandra is maybe
2 1/2 stories high but the branches are kind of spread out-I’ve attached a picture. It looks like I need to be more patient-some of them have light green healthy baby roots coming out of them from lower down :-). I still have to dig one up to look at the bottom. It is possible that the cold took more of a toll than I imagined as some of you have mentioned.

Thank you again for all comments!

Okay, your pine is younger and more lifted than ours ... so not nearly as dark and cavelike underneath. Plants should be able to live under that tree.

Here are our pachysandra:

The back is ferns with interloping pachysandra ... the front is pachysandra with intruding ferns. All we did was rake last year's ferns off of the pachysandra. These are on the north side of our house; soil is whatever was there, happens to be pretty loamy. We never water the pachysandra.

They look like this year round - they're evergreen. Well, I guess it's currently flowering, but other than that it's always the same. So no, cold shouldn't melt pachysandra (unless there's some other type of pachysandra ...) These are decades old and just get yanked when out of place (like when they escape into the yard). Someone came and collected some for his own bed back in the '90s; you never know any were harvested (then or now). (Wish you were closer so we could just give you some ...)

You may be right about the ones from the woods being better adapted, and the store-bought ones taking a bit longer to settle in and naturalize.

BlueBerryBundtcake-your pachysandras are beautiful! So healthy, green, and lush-exactly what id like mine to be!

So I dug up a few and some are looking worse with tan roots, while others still have the springier bright white roots and some small light green buds starting higher up the main root. I will give them until summer and then dig up the ones that don’t bounce back.

Thanks GreenGlam Gardening! You’re are beautiful!