I've a maple, pine and some roses. They were planted in the spring and are thriving, waist to chest high.

I don't know how much to water them come winter. We are located in an area that and old gold miner called "the shadow of the mountain" and have very little precipitation. Nothing measurable since a bit of snow in May. So I soak the plants deeply each week.

We are on an ancient sand dune.

How often should I water this winter?

If your last precipitation was snow in May, I doubt if you'll need to water in the winter. There's usually enough snowfall in the winter to take care of any water needs.

Next year, you'll want to start cutting back on watering the maple until you get to a point where you're watering deeply about once a month. I found a tree watering guide once that gave good guidelines on how much to give a tree (based on the size of the tree). I'll see if I can find it again and post a link.

I continue to give the trees good, deep drinks of water throughout the fall (isn't this weekend's rain perfect for that!) There are 3 that I deep root water in the fall to ensure the water is getting into the root ball. After the secondary water is turned off and I can no longer use the sprinkler, I manually water once monthly until the snow comes.

If we have a "typical" winter with lots of snow, then I scoop snow from the surrounding yard around the base of all the evergreen trees. Every few days, after the snow has melted from the trees, I scoop more snow from the yard onto the base of the evergreens. All winter long.

If we don't have enough snow, then I cart out buckets of water and pour around the evergreens slowly so that it runs into the ground. This is especially important for the evergreens on the south side of my house which get constant exposure to the sun, and is much warmer than any other part of the yard.

My landscaper was delighted that I didn't lose a single evergreen over the winter, while several of his customers who did not ensure their trees were getting water did lose trees. In addition, my sick Blue Atlas Cedar rebounded with this careful attention to keeping snow on the pine trees so it could melt and provide water all winter.

Good luck. This little bit of extra care is well worth the effort when I see how healthy my evergreens are.