In early May of 2010 I spent hours and hours trucking buckets of soil up to the "saddle" at the top of the back hill where there is a depression by the road. I planted three rosebay rhododendrons there with the idea that they would eventually form an evergreen screen in the woods at the edge of the road.
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| some evergreen rhododendrons along the swale at the top would hide the house and traffic |
In 2010 I had to water and water them during the drought, no small feat to get water up to the very top of the hill.
After the 2011 October snowstorm the utility road crews left piles of branches all over the little struggling rosebays, and I finally went up today to check on them.
Gone. Not just buried under branch debris, but one was actually decapitated (may regrow from the roots?), one was uprooted with the fine roots sticking up in the air, and one was completely under a heavy log that fell smack on top of it.
Oh well, I had a plan, and it didn't work out so well.
That area at the top of the hill is not really a woodland, it's a roadside danger zone. With snowplows, salt, road crew work, etc., none of it is really an environment to grow woodland plants in!
