I thought I did the right thing to bring my umbrella plant in before frost last year but it didn't matter, it died anyway. Maybe my basement was too cold (40 deg).

I could have kept in an area that was around 50 deg. Could that have made a difference?

I'm sorry the plant didn't make it. I have poor luck overwintering tropicals in my 50 degree F basement with two four foot long plant fluorescent lights. I got my first dwarf umbrella palm just last month so I will see if it overwinters. I haven't been able to overwinter dwarf papyrus which is similar in many ways.

Certainly 50 degrees F is better than 40 degrees F for that plant. Also, if you have it in water, I suggest heating the water to 70 degrees F (which I do). They can be overwintered in an indoor pond or as a house plant (kept really wet).

I left my umbrella plant in the pond all winter (pond temps to about 30F) and it LOOKED dead, dead, dead, BUT when I went to remove it, I saw a small green shoot... It is slowly coming back! I cut all of the dead stems down to about an inch. It now has about five stalks of new growth and is about 7 inches high.

Lori

I like to put small tropical potted plants (typical aquarium plants) in the shallow pond sections. But where they are hard to keep, I'm definately thinking of setting up an aquarium to overwinter these plants. Maybe even rooting a piece of the larger umbrella plant. It may grow to be ready for ponding in the next year.