There are many plants that savor the spring, summer and fall; however they do not fare well in the winter without some degree of protection. This is where buying burlap fabric by the yard comes in handy as you can purchase as much as you need to construct a plant shelter and as plants vary in size, so the shelter needs to be constructed to suit.
Shrub shelters:
Flowering shrubs, unlike their evergreen counterparts lose their visual appeal once the foliage has dropped off in preparation for winter. These bushes can be quite fragile and when they are located in a part of the country where there is considerable accumulation of snow, they should be protected from the weight. As the snow piles up, the branches can easily snap. To avoid this possibility, many people resort to building a shelter for these potentially fragile plants. As they are not flowering or providing any kind of visual interest during this time of year, protecting them makes a great deal of sense.
Most people build an “A” frame using either lumber purchased for the job or scraps that may be left over from another project. The homeowner then purchases burlap fabric by the yard and covers the A frame on both sides. The roof, which is the burlap fabric, is strong enough to hold the weight of snow as burlap itself has tremendous strength. As it has an open weave, when the frame is free from snow, natural light can still get through to the plant, this is not the case if the roof was to be built from a solid sheet of board.
Tree wraps:
Although evergreens do have visual appeal year round, there are situations where leaving these bushes open to the elements may be damaging. Evergreens are subjected to wind burn and for this reason, although people lose the winter beauty, they wrap the shrubs to protect from the elements.
The conventional method is to employ a “tree wrap” which is often nothing more than burlap fabric. The shrub is bound with the burlap, the finished job may make the shrub look like a mummy, but it is well protected until the burlap can be removed in the spring.
Rather than wrap, there are people who build a wind break on the prevailing wind side of the shrub, this provides protection and the beauty of the shrub still comes through. The wind break uses wooden stakes driven into the ground with a burlap cover which stops a great deal of the wind.