So disheartening!

Poly-anthus

Has anyone else lost many of plants this year?  I'm losing count of the plants lost, probably due to the very low temperatures over a long period.  Even established shrubs have given up the ghost.  I'm getting so disheartened.  Every time I go out to the garden, I'm finding that I have to dig out dead plants.  At my great age, it hardly seems worth replacing them, lol.

JennyJ

I was expecting to lose things but it's not too bad. I'm pretty sure my purple osteospermum is a goner but I'll give it another 3 or 4 weeks. The salvias were late coming into growth but look as if they're all OK except one Amistad and that's last year's cutting in a smallish pot that I forgot about and left outside. Two out of three coreopsis Moonbeam are OK, the other I think is a lost cause. Some of the dahlias left in the ground are shooting and it's too early to call time on the others.

B3

I thought I'd lost most of my moonbeams, but they're just late. Watch out for slugs, they'll slice off the shoots.
@Poly-anthus How close are you to 100?  t'other side best stick with annuals😉 Any younger than 100, it's worth a try with almost anything.

Fran IOM

@Poly-anthus I can understand it being so disheartening but please don't give up. 
Maybe with some more information and the names of the plants you are losing there will be someone on the forum who could explain the reason why they are dying off. I lose plants from time to time but usually put it down to something I could have done wrong. Maybe you could concentrate on the plants that are growing well and plant more of those. Even I at my great age I would never give up. My garden is my refuge.

Bijdezee

I've lost quite a few too. Some perennials, two Oleanders which were in an unheated greenhouse. Some herbs. I'm on clay so it holds a lot of water which freezes hard.

I suppose it gives us an excuse to buy more plants and some spaces to put them in 😁

Poly-anthus

Thanks for the replies.  I'm not quite 100 yet, lol, but approaching 80 fast!!, so planting things with an approximate acceptable height in 10 years is a bit of a challenge, hehe.  Today, I went to trim  a potentilla which has been in for about 12 years and has been great up until now, but discovered that most of the tall branches are completly dead with just a few newer shoots showing a bit of green.  A couple of azaleas about two or three years old have bitten the dust, a spirea is looking very ill, a fucshia (a cutting from a couple of years ago) is dead, etc, etc.  Maybe I should just stick to annuals!  Sorry, you got me on a very fed up gardening day!

bertrand-mabel

Lost our Daphne odora, Hibicus, winter sweet, forsthyia...... and still waiting to see what will come back from other shrubs.

Don't do many annuals so haven't sown as too cold.

Veg plants can't be sown outside so indoors and waiting for the right temps for planting out.

We have had frosts for all nights in April and then May 1st....yet another one.

Hopefully it will get better and we don't give up.

FritillariaScotland

What you wrote has really made me think, @Poly-anthus, my emotional relationship with gardening is certainly not one dimensional either. There's plenty of room for dejection and despair in amongst all the joy and anticipation that I have when I'm gardening. I think this is part of the magic of it though; that every year is different and every year we are forced to learn something new. I've lost quite a few plants this year, some of them because of the frosts, others certainly because of stupidity. And every year I have to conclude that there are battles I cannot win... But I think we need these lows, otherwise hope could we truly appreciate the highs? So keep doing what you're doing and make sure you keep posting on these forums, so that newbieish gardeners like me can learn from you! 

PeggyTX

I lost a very mature rosemary bush (2" diameter trunk)   and I fear my 20' tall Eriobotrya japonica 'Loquat tree' also known as 'Japanese Plum' may not make it.  Though the loquat tree did have 3-4 teeny, tiny shoots at the dirt line this week, they aren't growing much.  All leaves are brown, droopingl crispy critters and there are no shoots on ANY branches other than the few at the base of the trunk.  Texas experienced a once-in-a-lifetime arctic freeze in February that dropped temps to -16ºC for 3 nights and we experienced temps to -13ºC for over a week.  Something I've not seen in my 72 year lifetime.  Loquat trees are rated hardy down to 4ºC.  I'm trying to be patient, as one person knows of a loquat that looks as bad as mine that "died" in Texas' last major freeze in 2015 that re-leafed a full 7 months after the damage was done.  She sais she did her daily walking beside it and wished the owners would "put it out of its misery".  But this tree is in my front garden, so you can imagine how distressing it is to have this dead-looking monstrosity in my front garden for that long.  I find it amusing the potted 4' Japanese Maple right underneath this 20' Loquat was unscathed by the freeze.   

Nollie

I lost several dahlias in the ground, normally they are fine here earthed up for protection. A few Salvia Amistad didn’t make it. My walnut and pomegranate trees have been badly got by frost but are recovering slowly. The Loquat tree, borderline hardy here, got through the extended freeze completely unscathed, oddly.

Skandi

We had a couple of days right down to -19C which is not a normal temperature for here (-15 is rare but happens every 10 years or so)  we also had sub -8 temperatures for 2 weeks so the ground actually froze down about 30cm and took nearly a month to thaw. My plants were strange, I lost the rosemary which was expected, but the bay tree seems to have survived if rather damaged, the artichokes died they were 8 years old. a rather nice purple oxalis seems to have bitten the dust. French tarragon which was sitting in the barn survived but the water pipes under the barn froze and didn't survive, losing us 600m3 of water. and my fig planted the previous year survived without any damage woot!