Saratoga News

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There's a winter wonderland ... in Saratoga?

By Shannon Burkey

When Saratoga resident Vino Malhotra and his family looked out of their window on the morning of Jan. 13, for a moment they thought they had been transported to another land--a winter wonderland.

"I've been here for 30 years, and I've never seen anything like this," Malhotra said.

A sprinkler in the family's yard had burst as a result of the sub-freezing temperatures the area experienced in the past week. It sprayed water across the yard and left ice spears up to 3 feet long on most of the trees in their yard.

"It was amazing. I actually had to shovel ice from my driveway," Malhotra said.

Although he thought it was a beautiful scene, Malhotra said he is pretty sure several of the apple and plum trees on his property will not survive.

When temperatures dipped into the 20s for several days straight, many of California's citrus crops took a huge blow. But small private gardens in the area were also hit hard.

"I have a pretty big garden at home, and everything is looking very shriveled and cold right now," Village gardener Laurel Perusa said. "My geraniums are also looking very sad, but I'm hoping they come back."

Perusa's 1-acre property is home to fruit trees such as lime, lemon, orange, persimmon, avocado, fig, plum and peach. But those she said look as though they all survived even though she was not able to place protective covering on all of them.

Councilwoman Jill Hunter, who is the founder of the Village Gardeners, said that everything in her garden is dead because of the cold weather.

"I've lost all my begonias, all my sage--all the things that normally make it did not make it this time," she said. "I was able to bring some plants in and I covered a lot with blankets, but I still lost a lot to chunks of ice."

Fortunately, Hunter said the gardens and trees in the Village fared much better than those at her home.

"We were really gratified to see how much survived," Hunter said. "I think the pavement and the cars going by helped. We didn't see any real damage."

Hakone Gardens also weathered the cold pretty well even though the weather was cold enough to freeze the koi pond.

"Basically, Japanese gardens are particularly good at surviving all four seasons," said Jack Tomlinson, Japanese garden specialist at Hakone Gardens.

Because Japan has a colder climate than California, Tomlinson said, Japanese species of plants and trees actually perform better in the spring after a hard winter.

"There are bare branches on the trees, ice on the ground and a lot of color starting to come in. It makes the garden have the beauty of early winter."

Although there are orchards and vineyards around the city, not too many of them seemed fazed by the icy weather, either.

"This is the dormant season, and the vines are asleep. They actually love this weather," said Cooper-Garrod Estate Vineyards owner Bill Cooper. "This weather will actually kill any pests and bugs that might still be wintering in the vineyards."

At the 11-acre Novakovich Orchards, the cherry, prune and apricot trees, which are the majority of the fruit tree at the orchard, are also dormant and in no danger from the weather, said owner Leah Novakovich.

"This weather is actually good for the dormant trees," she said. "It gives them a really good rest."

The orchard is home to two orange trees and one lemon tree that are not dormant. Novakovich put heaters on them to keep them from freezing, but said she is not sure if they survived.

The freeze of 2007 may seem like a once-in-a-lifetime event, but after witnessing all the ice outside his California home, Malhotra is not convinced.

"They say global warming is coming, but I think it's global cooling," he said.