I would think you will be fine without doing anything. If you are concerned you could mulch heavily and spray with something like Wiltpruf in late fall or early winter. David

Hi guys. Jimhardy... my Abyssinian Bananas are great! I haven't brought them out of dormancy yet, but they are starting to grow anyway, so I'm going to have to do something! But last week we had a new record low for that date. It got down to 14 degrees. Global warming? Yeah, right. Not here! We've had an extremely cold Spring. I have my 3 big ones in dormancy and 3 young ones I've kept growing upstairs in the heat and light all winter, so I've got 6 that I'll plant outside this year. Williamr, I'm not sure whether or not I cooked it to death or if it froze. All I know is it's "deader than a door nail". I won't dig it up quite yet. I'm too busy to deal with it. I'm definitely having better luck growing my ensete. But I'll replant the palms or move to southern Utah where palms don't need protection. Probably both!

You can protect a fairly large area from wind instead of each plant individually. Each situation and exposure is slightly different, but your plan above seems entirely reasonable. This is by way of an aside, but I'm finding the burlap available today very inferior to what was available only a few years ago. The weave is much looser, individual threads less substantial. This means it tears away from staples or other fasteners too easily and provides less protection. In the last couple of years I have been using frost protection fabric instead of burlap. Anything that filters and slows the wind without blocking it entirely will do the job. What damages azaleas and other evergreen plants in winter is dessication. Frozen roots in frozen soil cannot move water into the above ground plant tissue. Winter sun on the leaves raises the temperature of the leaves causing them to transpire moisture which then cannot be replaced. Couple this with wind which also has a drying effect, and you are essentially freeze-drying the plant. The result in the spring is brown dead leaves and stems. How much winter sun is too much? This is really impossible to say. No direct sun is necessary in the winter, so blocking it to a reasonable degree will help any evergreen make it through the winter in good condition.

Thanks, Stuart and Ron! Means a ton, especially coming from peeps with gardens like yours : ) I wanted to mention one thing I was especially excited about… The Goldilocks white pine in the picture third from the end has little pinecones all over it! Not sure if you can see them from the picture but they sure are cute : ) Also interesting thing about the dianthus-- in spring they actually had a shocking amount of flowers on them, considering I just planted them last year, or maybe year before last. And one day I went out and it looked as if somebody had dropped a television set on one of them, half of it was gone and it looked smashed in the middle and was just mangled and crazy looking. All I can think is deer but it didn't look "grazed" like my hosta used to after the deer got to them. It looked mashed. Is if the deer had eaten half of them and then sat down on the other half. They seem to have recovered nicely though, thankfully.