Having plants next to the house helps tremendously... if we get frost here in Sacramento *gasp* it usually stays away from the house, usually a few feet in like a perimeter.

You have been fairly fortunate; other than the cold spell in mid December, it has been fairly warm this winter. The thing that will kill your plant, in addition to outright cold, is the ice/wind, etc. If you can give it a bit more protection from that sort of stuff, it should do ok.

I had a plain old ordinary rosemary in an unheated hoophouse hat survived five winters. It was almost four feet tall and had been cut back a lot. I kept it in the hoophouse (planted in soil) year round; in winter, it had a covering of heavy duty remay cloth.

It lasted until the winter of 2004 (when we had -16F temps for quite a few nights on end. Never came back that spring.

Bill McKay in E. Mass

Hi everyone. I thought I was crazy seeing my sage, rosemary and thyme were still alive in my herb garden. All of them still have a great sent. Just maybe they might survive until spring.

Thanks for the update, narch!

My 'Madeline Hill' has only browned out in the center down here in USZ6. It, too, is near a reflecting cement wall and is sheltered with a Salvia (still harvesting) and reseeding Fennel.

We'll see what happens during the freeze/thaw of 55degF and pouring rain to 20degF and 5" of snow in the next 24 hours.

Martie

I have a rosemary that is about 12 years old, and usually we have only weather in the teens a few times each winter, and only at night, so there is no problem. Last year, however, we had a cold snap of 7º, with 13-14º for highs for a week or two (no negatives here), which would kill normal rosemary. I "had" an arp, which died in this, even though it is supposedly resistant, but my big one I covered with a tarp, with a lamp inside, with a 100w bulb, sealed around the base with bricks as well as I could, and left it for 3 weeks, and the only problem was the brown tips on the branches where they were in contact with the tarp. This is how I keep my rosemary alive, and it has a trunk of about 2 1/2".

Dave

I planted rosemary from a seed packet about ten years ago and its still going strong though I've moved I guess I should have dug it up and took it with me when I moved because I have yet to get another one survive a 5 zone since...it was next to a cinder block wall maybe that's why it lived?