Winter-proofing tips?

A lovely mulch of garden compost helps to keep the soil from washing away. Bracken can be used to protect the roots of less hardy perennials, such as Lobelia tupa. But don't heap a mulch up against the trunks of trees or shrubs as they may start to rot. Fleece is handy for frost proctection but doesn't look very nice. Move pots up against the house for extra protection.

Picking up on Volunteer's first point , with my dahlias I normally lift and store them but last year decided to leave a few in the ground and cover them with a good mound of compost to see what happened and they have done just fine this year.

I've been busy wrapping my containers with bubble wrap this last week or so. It is expensive but able to be reused again.
I also use upturned budget wire hanging baskets filled with straw as a protection of a couple of perennials. It worked last year but as it was quite mild I can't say for sure about its success rate.
I don't make my own compost and found that bark mulch was a harbour for slugs so this year I'm trying soil conditioner instead.
I'm on a learning curve Fran :))

I stand pots up on "feet" of stone or wood (or polystyrene - anything really) so they are less likely to be affected by frost, especially if they are on stone pavers. Putting them close to the house is good, as Volunteer suggested. As Scottish says, bubble wrap is excellent and lasts for years. Using upturned wire hanging baskets is a great idea! I have been racking my brains for a suitably sized framework for a cloche - and now I've got it! Thanks, Scottish!

In desperation last year I used an old tea towel to wrap around the crown of my Agapanthus - worked a treat!

the leaves that fall can be gatherd up and used in many ways to protect plants,soil etc and its natural . i put lots of leaves round my sycad excuse my spelling and my tree furn while its short . if you leave any they just break down and become a great mulch / compost .as for pots bubble rap cant be beaten .

Melchisdec - those up turned baskets do lots of jobs around my garden - I use them to grow nepeta through - it stops the cats damaging the crowns when they roll on them. They can still have a wee chew but can't do much else. I also place them over the crowns of emerging Paeonies in the spring - it saves me damaging them when I'm doing a spring clean up.

In your situation wrapping individual pots would hardly be practical - could you fix a double layer of fleece over the lot?

Well! I think I'm off to the cheap shops in town to buy up lots of these extremely useful wire baskets!! Race you!

busy making lots of notes here!

I've salvaged a couple of sofa bases - wooden frames with slats across; used one as the roof of my worktable, i'd been wondering what to use the others for. Occurred to me that if I could suspend them over the plant tables, I could then cover them to roof over the whole table - wouldn't add warmth, but would at least keep snow off, provided it didn't blow in the open front - jutst thoutht, I could arrange the roof to hang down over the front as well.

For pots, there's the prob of insulating the base as well as the soil surface and the plant above it. I have a box of bubble wrap - bought when I was selling on eBay - keep forgetting that I could insulate pots with it, will have to have a go, but looking at 100+ pots tends to be a bit discouraging. Apart from a couple of large grasses on the ground (in saucers on wheels, so they're not actually in contact with the ground) all my pots are on tables about hip-high, so though there's no cntact wiht the ground there's a gap beneath the tables to let cold air in

lol Scottish, we're all on a learning curve, just that some are further "round the bend" than others.

its worth putting all the pots close to each other and put straw and fallen leaves over them and then net them off .

I've got 100+ plants on three tables in a garden ten feet "long" so getting them close together isn't really an option! but they're mostly small,pots, so are more vulnerable, which is another reason for nestling them - also helps in summer, to try to create a microclimate that mgiht slow down the rate that they dry out.

Could sort of box off the sides and back and fill the gaps, hadn't thoiught of that before, thanks, NP

your welcome fran being on tables is a good start anyway . great minds think alike ,mass equals like you say a microclimate fran xx .