Landscaping Tips from ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex: Transplanting Shrubs and Flowers

As cooler winter weather approaches, you may be wondering what you can do to protect your plants from the chill. We talked to the Walt Disney World landscaping crew at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex to collect some tips for preserving your plants during these cooler months. Below are some tips for combating the winter’s cool temperatures.

• Covering a plant, shrub or flowers with a sheet or blanket will help ward off some of the frost.
• Transplanting a plant from the ground to a pot inside is a good idea, but be sure to get the plant into the pot as quickly as possible after removing it from the ground.
• Be sure to pay extra attention to the plants after they’ve been transported, particularly how you water them. Removing the plants from their original environment takes a toll on the plant, so be sure to water them more than normal. This will allow them to recover quicker.
• The smaller the plant, the more sensitive it will be to the move. Try to avoid moving young plants, especially when they are small.
• Accept the fact that not all plants can survive extreme cold temperatures, especially in southern climates. Tropical plants can’t survive through night after night of freezing temperatures.
• Plants can vary by their frost/cold tolerance. When purchasing any plant, they have a plant zone number on them, letting you know the plants’ breaking point in cold weather. Frost can form at ambient temperatures around 37 degrees, therefore if they are not frost tolerant, they would need to be covered.
• Although a plant may look dead after sitting through a cold winter, be sure to look for any green material in the stem before removing the plant. Use a knife to scrape away the outside and look for any green within the plant.

Those are the basic need-to-know tips for transplanting flowers. One unique way to fight the cold weather is also to wrap your shrubs in Christmas lights. The heat emitted from the bulbs is typically enough to provide the necessary warmth to ward off the frozen temperatures. Do you know of any other creative ways to protect your plants?