1. Water your lawn and move potted plants indoors. Be sure to protect wood floors.

2. Give your plants a blanket of mulch. With moist soil, mulch helps protect roots. Great for abelia, azalea, boxwood, eleagnus, hawthorn, holly, ligustrum, loropetalum, mahonia, nandina, roses, wax myrtle, and yaupons.  Duranta, hamelia, angel’s trumpet and root-hardy hibiscus may lose all or some tops in a freeze, but if you water and mulch they’ll return from their roots in the spring.

3. Provide cover! Those folks who wrap shrubs, trees, winter annuals, camellias and fruit trees with sheets or blankets are not just trying to get rid of old blankets. When freezing rain is forecast, cover plants with sheets and blankets, then cover those with a heavier plastic sheet such as a plastic painting cloth. Secure with bricks and stones.

4. After the freeze, do not attempt to wash the ice off the plants the morning after. Wait until the ice thaws, then assess plant damage. Tip: if one third or half the major limbs are broken, first-aid resuscitation may not be practical. Prop the limbs of young trees mal-formed from the weight of ice. Remove soggy, damaged parts, but leave the freeze damaged wood to protect live wood farther down the branch.

I wish I would have known this sooner: my poor camellias think I’m the worst mother in the world, and I hope my hydrangeas forgive me for not giving them cover.