I wouldn't touch it yet. I don't know if the cold wave is over for you yet, but any woody plant as large as you describe should come back when the really warm weather is established. Just because the leaves are dead doesn't mean the plant is dead. I had a large camellia (main stem at the ground was about 3 inches) and it was totally toasted one year by a very cold winter spell. All the leaves fell off dead. In spring, I checked the small branch tips first. Scrape off a bit of bark with your fingernail. If it's green underneath, it's alive, If not check an older, thicker stem, and keep going until you find green under the bark. For me it was almost all the way down to the ground. You can trim off all the dead stuff, but then be patient. It took until late June here before the camellia finally showed a tiny green shoot just a few inches from the ground on the thickest wood. Then there were more, and today the plant is back to it's original size. For you in your zone you'll probably see it resprout sooner than mine did. So don't give up. The roots of your plant are well established and recovery should go pretty fast, once it starts to regrow. The key is to be patient. Don't expect to see new leaves the first few days you have warm weather again. It will be more like a few weeks or even a few months. It depends on how thick the surviving wood is. The new buds have to grow through the wood so the thicker the wood, the longer it takes the new buds to show. Good luck!

Thank you for the advice. I think your approach is the correct one based on other things I've been hearing- don't do anything right now. Spring will be the time when I can assess the situation and find out what needs to be done.

I will say that I'm noticing that not all of the leaves were killed. Probably 85%, but even though 15% remaining seems insignificant it is a good indicator to me that the whole plant is not dead.

Sadly I think a lot of FL is really going to suffer from this last cold snap. I've lived here my whole life and only remember 1 or 2 times it has been this bad. Oh well, we can keep our fingers crossed for an early spring!

Thanks

Gardenias grow just fine here and it gets down to 17 every winter. Mine all look fine even after we got down to 14 a few nights in a row this winter. Just wait. See what happens. Maybe it just wasn't used to it?