Helping frost damaged Hebe 'Blue Gem'

In the coastal area where I live, Hebe 'Blue Gem' is quite a common site - and I have planted about a dozen in my garden in recent years. Alas, the very cold, snowy weather over the past two winters has damaged them a lot. None of them actually died in the winter of 2009/10, though some of the smaller ones were seriously set back. The damage this winter appears to have been worse, with almost no healthy, green leaves remaining on any of the plants - the largest of which are about 3 feet high.

I'm guessing that most of them will survive and begin to recover. I want to know what I should do - particularly in terms of cutting them back. My gut instinct is to cut them back fairly hard so that they regenerate as fairly compact rather than leggy plants. Should I? And if so, when?

 

Thanks for that. I'll wait a few weeks.

I guess that I would be right in assuming that if I cut them back, new sprouts could come from the old wood, and not just from the last year's greenish growth - and they will come if the plant is alive.

I'm also guessing that a compact shrub will be more resistant to damage from frost and snow than a straggly and open one, because it will be protecting itself to some extent.

 

My purple pixies have new green shoots at branch ends but nothing down the rest of the legth, which is brown.
Cut back?

Cheers
D

 

Update:

No sign of life in my Hebes.

However,

1) Last autumn, I gave them a trim. I managed to pick up most of the clippings and put them in the compost heap, but a few were missed and spent the winter lying underneath the plants. In the spring, when the plants looked brown and dead, the cuttings were looking fresh and green. I stuck them in some potting compost, and some of them are showing promising signs of new growth.

2) I found a couple of small Hebe plants (they seem to have self seeded) growing between paving slabs by my house. I pulled them out as gently, and stuck them into some compost. We'll see if they survive the experience.

 

Hebes got new growth on many branches now.
Cut back the dead ones to help reduce the workload on the plant.

Looks a bit of mess but will hopfully pull back

D

 

We had a wonderful Hebe on our front, not sure on its variety but it was a very mature specimen with blue flowers much loved by the bees and hover flies. I'm guessing it was certainly 10-15 years old, but although undamaged by the previous winter it is now completley dead and I'm having to remove it - very sad...

 

Update:

Well, as suspected, my Hebes were dead. However, it looks like I'll get 6 or 7 plants out of the clippings and self-seeded plants - a quite remarkable result.

I made an effort to look in other people's gardens in this part of Scotland, and I think that every single Hebe "Blue Gem" with one exception died last winter. So the fact that I've got seven little ones coming along is an excellent result.

Other kinds of Hebe have survived - our Hebe salicifolia plants were not too badly affected. I've bought a wee Hebe speciosa as well, since I believe it is a bit hardier than Blue Gem.

An interesting thing is that having given the matter some thought, I've decided in the past few weeks that my Blue Gems were in the wrong place, so that the fact that they died over the winter was actually a blessing in disguise.