We visited the Grange last weekend and had wonderful warm weather up in the 30's, but with a few showers and were able to spend time in the garden pruning the dead and damaged shrubs.
We discovered that the damage was caused by what is called a Black Frost and thought this was just a french name, but apparently not. Over a 3 day period from around April 11-15 the region experienced a dramatic drop in temperature.
It was a frost without snow that blackens vegetation and as defined by the Britannia Encyclopedia:
plants containing plentiful and dilute solutions in their leaves, fruits, and so on, are easily damaged. The occurrence of a killing frost without a hoarfrost deposit is sometimes popularly called a black frost.
cooling will cause condensation to occur. In the absence of sufficient moisture, hoarfrost does not form, but the water in the tissues of plants may freeze, producing the condition known as black frost.
This explains what has happened and why so many shrubs have suffered, although we are pleased that most appear to be recovering.
We have now invested in a shredder to make use of all the pruning we will be doing and to avoid merely burning the waste, we can now create our own mulch to conserve the moisture in the beds and limit the weeds.
