It certainly looks more like the kind of damage @Pete.8 describes, and all evergreens drop foliage through the year, especially when stressed, so in drought conditions, or the opposite, ie prolonged wet/cold/freezes etc.
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Yes - when there are extremes of weather, either way, it stresses plants. Many people have had difficulties of varying kinds with all sorts of plants. I've lost all my phormiums. They're in raised beds or pots to mitigate our climate and soil, and I've grown lots of them over the last few decades. They can normally cope no problem with the low temps we've had [it was also below minus ten a few years ago] but the temp isn't the only factor. We had another very mild autumn, plus the wettest December on record, and lots of the freezing/thawing cycle, and it's that extreme swing of conditions that sees them off ,especially if it goes on for a while. All the privet round here was growing well into November, when it would normally be pretty dormant, and already well adjusted to the temps we would expect through September and October. Instead, it's all looking knackered because all that soft growth succumbed to that harsher spell. Hopefully that'll all be fine though. Plants also acclimatise to their conditions, so in colder areas like mine, you find that many plants will manage perfectly well even in less than ideal situations, as long as they're well established and healthy. It's one of the challenges of gardening
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
LOL, yes, I'm discovering the challenges of gardening! You and I have very different climates, but I too have lots of plants which are struggling or haven't made it (partly my own fault for not watering enough during the drought). I'm learning to buy only tough and hardy plants, which can get by with a bit of neglect!
I learned the hard way that it's better to only have reliably hardy plants @susiebower . Every so often I try something a bit iffy, but it doesn't always work. I grow a few things which need over wintering, but I don't have enough room now as this house is smaller. We don't get the long term dry hot stuff that the south gets either, but it's still getting far too hot for me - I'm not used to that weather, and it's certainly been changing in the last five or six years. I spent a lot of last year inside, out of the sun. We're now getting longer, and more frequent dry spells too, which is always worrying, but causes a different type of adaptation for our planting ideas. It would be unusual here for us to get more than a few days without rain [in summer] and we're now getting spells of five or six, and several of them. We've also had hardly any snow - that wet December would normally have been snowier, but the temps were too high so it was sleet at most, then ice when the temp drops. There was an article recently in the walking site I use about how mild the last 18 months have been, everywhere up here, and that's very concerning. I hope that changes - or I'll have to move further north !
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Posts
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I've lost all my phormiums. They're in raised beds or pots to mitigate our climate and soil, and I've grown lots of them over the last few decades. They can normally cope no problem with the low temps we've had [it was also below minus ten a few years ago] but the temp isn't the only factor. We had another very mild autumn, plus the wettest December on record, and lots of the freezing/thawing cycle, and it's that extreme swing of conditions that sees them off ,especially if it goes on for a while.
All the privet round here was growing well into November, when it would normally be pretty dormant, and already well adjusted to the temps we would expect through September and October. Instead, it's all looking knackered because all that soft growth succumbed to that harsher spell. Hopefully that'll all be fine though.
Plants also acclimatise to their conditions, so in colder areas like mine, you find that many plants will manage perfectly well even in less than ideal situations, as long as they're well established and healthy. It's one of the challenges of gardening
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
We're now getting longer, and more frequent dry spells too, which is always worrying, but causes a different type of adaptation for our planting ideas. It would be unusual here for us to get more than a few days without rain [in summer] and we're now getting spells of five or six, and several of them.
We've also had hardly any snow - that wet December would normally have been snowier, but the temps were too high so it was sleet at most, then ice when the temp drops. There was an article recently in the walking site I use about how mild the last 18 months have been, everywhere up here, and that's very concerning. I hope that changes - or I'll have to move further north !
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...