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A Refuted Winter Care Myth!
I consider this to be analogous to lying on railroad tracks to escape being run over by an automobile. Marginal or shallow water plants that are hardy in your area will survive very nicely if you don’t move them deeper in the pond. The important factor is that their crowns be covered by water. The ice that will form around these plants is a natural defense against the bitterly cold, dehydrating winds that could possibly harm them. Also, I suspect that many plants could and will survive exposure of their crowns to the winter air. These plants have survived in the wild with no one to move them deeper for millions of years and I think most of them have developed natural defense mechanisms against freezing to death. Water lilies and other deep-water plants may not need to be moved to the deepest part of your pond either. I say this advisedly because I think the risk of freezing damage may be greater for these plants. In my own experience, I am amazed by the ability of these deep-water plants to handle freeze. Hard winters in our area can be especially cold, yet we suffer no losses to our water lilies even when they are in very shallow water and locked in ice for the better part of the winter. I think that these plants may be more harmed by repeated freezing and thawing that can occur at the level of the crown when winter temperatures fluctuate unevenly over the course of several months. I have no proof of this and admit that this “freezing and thawing” theory is pure conjecture on my part. We lost no plants to freezing this year or any other year since we have been in business despite never moving them to deeper water. The plants with which you must concern yourself are plants that are out of their hardiness zone. The best approach for preserving these plants is to move them to a greenhouse or to a protected location in your garage or house. In the case of tropical plants (hardiness zones 8 to 10) these are good houseplants if given adequate light and kept moist. Know the hardiness zone of your area and that of your plants, and then take the appropriate action to protect your plants from freezing to death. This action will very often be to leave where they are rather than moving them to the bottom of your pond. the actual search results. Those are not from the site, but may be of interest, since Google targets the ads to your particular search.
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