landscaping freeze pg 44,45,46.qxp_Layout 1 3/17/21 3:01 PM Page 1
Houston, we had a freeze. Supply, pricing and how to move forward with your landscape. By
DEBORAH WINKELMAN
T
he extreme drop in temperatures we experienced in Texas in mid-February has many of us in the multifamily workplace asking ourselves a few questions. How do we plan for events similar to this in the future? Could we have prevented the damage we sustained? How do we help our residents and staff during this rebuilding and recovery phase? Many of those questions were asked and discussed during the Special Edition Winter Storm Expert Exchange held on February 24. Through this article, I’d like to delve deeper into the impact on landscape and your landscape budget. After I walked a property with a client recently, I asked a handful of questions to my vendors about supply and pricing. Landscapers buy from wholesale nurseries and growers for their trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals. In Texas, we tend to buy more from growers in Texas and Louisiana, and then California and Florida as well as other states. “We buy from growers all over the United States. Texas and Louisiana growers are where we spend the most money, and some of them lost crops but many didn’t. We are utilizing vendors farther away to make up for what we can’t find close to home. What this means is that added freight and supply and demand come into play and prices will go up some,” Ginger Crawford with TreeSource
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Many plants are starting to show signs of recovery, but many just didn’t survive. Utilizing a landscape professional can help you determine what needs to be removed, replaced or cut back in order to give it time to flourish again. Wholesale Nursery said about availability and price increase. Crawford was quick to point out that in the past, soaring fuel prices led to increased plant prices, and, last year, COVID-19 and a few other smaller factors impacted some price increases. So, the good news and bad news is that we will have the plants we need, but the prices may go up a little to get those plants. What Survived, What Didn’t and What Will Return Many plants are starting to show signs of recovery, but many just didn’t survive. Utilizing a landscape professional can help you determine what needs to be removed, replaced or cut back in order to give it time to flourish again. Across the board, many Gardenias, Oleanders, Viburnum and Indian Hawthorn are not salvageable. Yaupons, ligustrum and boxwoods are shrubs that
shined through the freeze and are starting to show new growth. Salvia is the number one perennial I see flourishing right now. Trees and/or large shrubs with the exception of bottle brush and Japanese boxwoods made it through with little to no damage. With the proper fertilization and hard pruning, many plants will fill out and thrive again in our landscapes. When it comes to irrigation systems, we are seeing most repairs being associated with the backflow unit or the PVB. The PVB is the most vulnerable part of the system during a freeze as it is a challenge to empty all the water out of all the small spaces. These PVBs have small brass parts that can bust during a freeze if any water is still inside there. I’m not seeing many pipes busted as most professional irrigators/landscapers know how to properly drain and freeze protect an irrigation system. The demand for PVB parts was high www.haaonline.org
