you should also protect them from winter water accumulation .... e.g. put them under a pine tree.. deck.. etc ... since i presume a bird BATH does not have proper drain holes ...

also.. in my area.. i would put them on the north side of the house.. no direct sun on the shallow soil ...

get them dormant.. and keep them dormant as long as you can.. and you should be all set .. whatever that means in your zone ...

ken

The ice plant, Firestorm and Blue Heron will not survive overwinter in the birdbath outside......the hens and chicks (semps) and the stonecrop sedums should be fine as-is as long as drainage is good. Poor drainage in winter is more often the cause for failure than actual cold.

Sounds like you will be dividing up your composition :-(

Did you checked hardiness of the plants you have doubts about?

For the ones that are hardy, good drinage is the key, as gardengal said...even more important in the shallower bird bath (I am assuming it is shalow...)

@ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5, I drilled several holes in the bird bath for drainage (it's about 3" deep), and used a mix of sand and potting soil, but you know how it goes... it still seems wetter than it should :-( I'm kinda thinking about taking it all apart, pot everyone individually, then drill more holes and redo it with perlite instead of sand.

The Blue Heron is a surprise favorite of mine so I REALLY want to save it. I think I'm going to put it in a pot and bring it inside, put it in a window and hope for the best. I've read that I could propagate it with cuttings, too, so I might try that just to have backups.

The Royal Ruby was gorgeous in the beginning, but I think it might already be gone :'-( It was supposed to be OK in cooler weather but the leaves look all rotted away! I don't know what to think about that, I'm pretty disappointed.

The rest of it looks good and cost a lot more money than I'd anticipated, but it's all replaceable so I'm not as concerned with them as I would be the Blue Heron.

All that said, yeah, with the soil not draining as well as I'd hoped, I think I'm going to divide it all up and redo it, anyway.

Except for Sempervivums, in the future, it might be easier to pot up some trimmings to save inside as insurance, rather than dismantling happy plants. If they go into winter established & vigorous, they have the best chance to survive, for the hardy ones.

No matter what a label or resource says, I like to save some of any new plant inside for winter until I see it come back the next spring in the ground (or birdbath, as the case may be.) A few plants, like Sempervivum, don't do well without a cool winter, but that's not a problem in my "plant room" which is unheated but gets enough residual heat to keep tropical plants happy, yet cool enough for those that can't handle normal room temp. A windowsill can be an option if your windows aren't very air-tight.

Also, covering drain holes with window screen can prevent clogging, mostly.

first off.. rebuilding in spring would be fun ,,.. dont see any downside to that ...

with may native sand.,. i would just heal all the plants into mother earth ... and lightly cover with mulch.... in my ground freeze MI .... .. the point being.. the sand is high drainage.. even when frozen ....

potting just adds a whole other level of potential problems ... so why complicate your life ...

i like the idea of potting some cuttings.. not even sure they need to go inside .... many times ive found hens and chicks anywhere i carried a clump... they haven just fallen off and touched the soil where ever they hit the ground ... and often rooted in ....

ken

What do you all think, did my sempervivum and stonecrop completely die? Or is this something that will come back?

We just had a burst of rain, so the soil in this pic is wet from that.

I had moved the Blue Heron and Lemon Ball to the greenhouse, and they did fine. But I left everything else in the bird bath and put it in the garage; cool, but never freezing.

They shouldn't die, as long as there is drainage. All my hardy succulents overwinter outside & it's much cooler zone...if they don't have drainage, they may rot...regardless if cold or warm. No need to move hardy plants into gh...

The Blue Heron is definitely not cold-weather hardy, so I knew to move it pretty early. The Lemon Balm was kinda questionable; I've had it before and it didn't survive the winter, so I wanted to be careful. I actually had several cuttings in pots in the greenhouse, and now I have a TON of it! LOL

But for the others, drainage shouldn't have been an issue over the winter, but maybe a lack of sunlight? And maybe a lack of water, since I really only watered them every 2-3 weeks.

The plants that appear to be dead are:

Black sempervivum

Royal Ruby sempervivum

Cobweb Buttons sempervivum

Ice Plant

Dragon's Blood stonecrop

Are you suggesting that I give it more time to see what happens? If so, how much time?

I don't have all you named, but have cobwebs, royal ruby, dragon's blood - they all survive winter outside. They get covered by snow, so are 'insulated' & I don't think they need sun during winter. I never water them during their dormancy. Snow cover is enough...only time I lost semps was 1 winter when we had a sudden ice storm a water froze in the pots. Sudden thaw followed, & drainage was poor. I still didn't loose all but many. I also had many pots under leaking eaves & didn't realize it.

Blue Heron is echeveria, so not hardy (according to google - I don't have either). Maybe you meant Sedum Lemon Ball? - that is hardy to z4; supposed to survive -10*F.

Semps look quite 'dead' after the winter, but recover soon. There could be some loss. Old rosettes may die. It looks like some mature rosettes rotted off in your photo - but offsets seems to be there. Maybe I am wrong?

Photo below shows few pots after snow is gone - they are just 'waking up':

Are you suggesting that I give it more time to see what happens? If so, how much time?

==>>

your arent going to get the definitive answer you want... wait as long as you can ...

when you get to that point.. dig it up ..... and look at the roots.. and if they still look viable.. replant it ... if not.. throw it over your shoulder into the lawn.. to be mown up to compost next time you mow the lawn ...

ken

BTW: it wasnt alll that rare.. to find live things on top of my lawn when i finally did mow it.. lol ... grow or die.. and they decided to grow.. go figure on that .. lol.

Is your pic from 2 days ago the way this looked when you took it outside, or has it been outside for a while already?

That pic was immediately after I took it outside for the first time. Or well, technically the second time; I had it out for a few days, then temperatures dropped below 50 at night so I put it back in the garage.

We traditionally have our last frost around mid-May, so it'll probably go back in the garage at least once more.

How long do you think I should have it outside before making any final decisions?

I THINK that I'm seeing new chicks from the dead growth.

These next two pics are the same plant, you can see that the new growth is hanging down from what appeared to be a dead stem:

And this is sticking up from another one that looked dead:

Now what? When and where do I cut it off to replant it?

I am not sure if I understood: did you keep planter inside during the winter? If so, sempervivums should have NOT rotted...Semps are hardy, some even to z3 - so your z7 shoud be NP to overwinter them outside! 50 *F is plenty warm for them.

Be little more patient...the 'chicks' will be cut off & potted. Stolon - the stem they are attached to mother plant with - is not the root. The roots will grow from the bottom of the new (now very small) rosette...I cut stolon abt 1.5" long & use it to stick plant into soil. It will anchor the plant/chick, and it will root very easily...

Here is photo of 2 offsets of Gold Nugget that were separated. Stolons have been cut off & chicks were potted. Photo is approx. 1mo ago, they already rooted & grew some. I can take up-to-date photo but has to be tomorrow, it is too dark & they are outside...

I am not sure if I understood: did you keep planter inside during the winter?

In the detached garage... little sunlight, really, but protected from freezing cold. And I only watered every 2-3 weeks.

I had 3 Royal Ruby, 3 Black, and 3 Cobweb Buttons sempervivum in there, and all are black and appear rotted now. I also had Ice Plant and a Firestorm sedum in there that appear dead, too.

The Lemon Balm did fine, though, and the Dragon's Blood stonecrop appears to be coming back.

I figured that the sempervivum would be fine either way, I mainly just moved it to the garage to protect the Lemon Balm and Ice Plant! I had another small planter of Royal Rubies left outside, and it did just fine. So I suspect that the problem had less to do with the temperature, and more to do with either low light or the lack of water?

Either way, I'll give it some more time and see what's what :-D The chicks here confused me, though, because the ones I've transplanted before had grown outward instead of straight up.

You may have overwatered. They should not be watered in winter much, every 2-3 weeks is too often. If u decide to keep semps indoors for any reason, best is to keep them cold & dry. Cold like in unheated space. And water only 1x every 6-8 weeks... As I mentioned few times, semps are hardy & will overwinter outside - I know, I have them & am in much colder zone than you. It gets to below -5 *F here during the winter with quite a bit of snow. I would have taken Firestone sedum out & kept it indoors; Ice plant is cold hardy in z5...as the name suggests.

As i repeated, semps don't need more light or water during the winter. I have also cobwebs...they are fine & slowly multiply...as u can see:

2nd pot has sedums too. photos just taken:

...and here are 3 more: Gold nugget; Purple beauty & Citrus sunrise:

As for shape of the chicks, it depends on how big they are; some are droopy, some upright:

these were cleaned & stolons cut shorter & potted up:

I gotcha. For the most part I just watered it whenever it rained, so it would get the same water as the Royal Rubies that I'd left outside. So if light and temperature weren't the issues, then water is the only variable left.

I hope the ice plant comes back, it was really pretty in there :-(

I was wondering about sunburn but if there was not existing foliage when this was taken outside, that's not a factor.