How to Protect Your Trees Shrubs All Winter

Winter in Chicagoland and Milwaukee can be challenging for trees and shrubs, with cold temperatures, drying winds, and fluctuating conditions that can stress plants. Learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter helps ensure they emerge healthy and ready to grow when spring arrives.

Understanding Winter Stress

Trees and shrubs face several challenges during winter, including cold temperatures, drying winds, and temperature fluctuations. Learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter begins with understanding these stress factors and taking steps to mitigate them.

Winter damage can occur from freezing temperatures, desiccation from drying winds, and damage from temperature fluctuations that cause plants to break dormancy prematurely. Knowing how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter helps prevent these problems.

Watering Before Winter

One important step in learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter is ensuring they enter winter with adequate moisture. Deep watering in late fall, before the ground freezes, helps plants store moisture that they can use during winter months.

This pre-winter watering is particularly important for evergreen trees and shrubs, which continue to lose moisture through their leaves during winter. Learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter includes providing this essential moisture before cold weather arrives.

Mulching for Protection

Applying mulch around trees and shrubs is another key strategy for learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter. Mulch helps insulate roots, maintain soil moisture, and protect against temperature fluctuations.

When learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter with mulch, apply it in a layer several inches deep around the base of plants, being careful not to pile it against trunks or stems, which can create problems.

Protecting from Wind

Drying winter winds can cause significant damage to trees and shrubs, particularly evergreens. Learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter may include using windbreaks, burlap screens, or other protective measures for vulnerable plants.

These protective measures help reduce moisture loss from leaves and needles, which is an important part of learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter in windy locations.

Preventing Salt Damage

Road salt and de-icing materials can damage trees and shrubs planted near streets and sidewalks. Learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter includes taking steps to prevent salt damage, such as selecting salt-tolerant plants for these locations or using protective barriers.

Understanding how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter from salt damage helps ensure plants near roadways and walkways remain healthy despite exposure to de-icing materials.

Pruning Considerations

Proper pruning timing is part of learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter. Late fall or early winter pruning should be done carefully, as some plants are best pruned at other times of year to avoid stress or damage.

Understanding when and how to prune as part of learning how to protect your trees and shrubs all winter helps ensure pruning supports plant health rather than creating additional stress.

Greenwise Winter Protection Services

At Greenwise, our landscape maintenance services include winter protection strategies as part of comprehensive plant care. We work with property owners throughout Chicagoland and Milwaukee to help them learn how to protect their trees and shrubs all winter.

Our team can help you develop winter protection strategies tailored to your specific plants and site conditions, ensuring your trees and shrubs are prepared for winter challenges.