What’s cheap, brown and keeps wind off the rhododendrons? What’s ugly, gets tattered after a couple of years of stapling, and is torn by deer pulling and biting through it?

Answer: burlap.

It’s been used for decades as “winter protection” for vulnerable shrubs or small trees. When I worked at Cooperative Extension in the early 1990s, we recommended burlap, snow fence or wire cages.

New products have come along, and we have more plant choices that stand up to tough landscape situations. So you don’t necessarily have to send those poor, rag-tag stubs of arborvitae and yews into winter, draped in their burlap bandages.

What needs protecting?

People with new landscapes don’t know what to protect for winter, understandably. After investing lots of money or love in shrubs, there’s an urge to wrap, cover and tuck them all in. (I’ve noticed some people wrapping in plastic, but do NOT do that; it will cook the plants and encourage fungus growth.)

Most of you don’t have to do anything. If you planted a hardy enough shrub (Zone 4 or 5) in decent soil, with compost, and you haven’t let it dry out (until the soil has frozen), then it should come through winter fine. The two killers: 1) roots drying out, and 2) cold too extreme for that kind of plant (i. e. a Zone 6 plant).

Evergreens are especially vulnerable (including “broad-leaf” plants like rhododendrons), more so in windy sites. They lose moisture through green leaves in winter (transpiration), and the roots can’t take up any water. Recently planted ones are most at risk.

You might try to shelter recently planted evergreens and not-so-hardy plants such as Japanese maples or Pieris japonica in harsh locations. Others to protect are the most deer-prone (yews, arborvitae, many more) and evergreens along roads that become salt-damaged.

Sheltering choices

If a shrub is under the eaves, so ice and snow can fall and smash it, you need a tepee of some sort. Or maybe the snowblower throws a heavy load onto the little plants. Otherwise, falling snow doesn’t hurt plants.

If you’re just blocking the wind or warding off deer, a circle of snow fence, or stakes and burlap, may suffice. To prevent salt damage, use a screen or fence, but don’t let burlap touch the plants since the fabric absorbs the salt and increases damage.

The Shrub Coat and Shrub Cover line of products, invented locally, solve all the plant-protection challenges at once. They use a green fabric that deer can’t tear, and sunlight and rain get through, so the plants are perfect in spring. They include tepees, sacks, custom-fit hedge covers and long screens that keep off salt and wind. The cost may seem steep, but it’s not when you compare it to losing and replacing the plants (and you’ll use it for decades.)

Here’s hoping you find good answers to your plant-protection worries, and maybe we’ll see a lot less raggedy burlap!

Sally Cunningham is a garden writer, lecturer and consultant.