Any chance of recovery?

[Kamma89]

Hi all,

Poor shrub was moved out of sight & forgotten about. The trunk is still green underneath. Is there any point in trying to plant it now? It came as a pair & the other one is thankfully still alive.

I'd say you never know ! It doesn't look hopeful but , as they say, never say never. I hope someone else comes along to advise you how to cut it back to give it the best chance if survival, I'm not that knowledgeable. I'd just cut the branches by about half and wait till next year & see if anything happens but that's because I don't know any better 😂

Salix is a form of willow so in theory could grow in your ear, as long as you took regular showers. If the roots are still alive it will come back, give it a go.

Brilliant. Thanks both. I'm very new to gardening & have about a 50/50 track record on keeping things alive. I'll research cutting back as wouldn't have even known to do that & keep fingers crossed till next year

Every couple of years I cut down a willow, in the wrong place. It grows back again and I leave it because I love the catkins in the spring. Two years later I cut it down to soil level and up it springs again.
It started from a willow stick with a woven fish on the end!🤣
Put your in the ground and it will grow.

Thats really encouraging @Beebumble2 I'm liking the sound of this resilient plant. It might survive even with me at the helm!

Salix flamingo is usually grafted high up onto the trunk of a bog-standard willow. You need to look carefully at which bits are still alive. If everything above the graft has had it, then you might as well chuck it away because all you've got left is ordinary willow.

Ahh, then don’t cut it far down!

Give it a good soak and plant it.

The branch at the top looks quite green still, which is a good sign.

Like a PP said, salix are very determined. I bought some twisted willow branches that had been sprayed with silver paint from a florist to use as Christmas decorations on a balcony last year. I stuck them in a pot of compost to hold them in place and by the time I took the decorations down on twelfth night, they were sprouting leaves.

Thanks all. Its in the ground. Lightly cut back, got rid of as many dead leaves as possible. If I remember will update thread next year with an update :)

Please do update us, well me anyway, I'm invested in this now :)

A couple of weeks in now & I presume that I'm actually growing a willow tree now? Obviously if that is the case it's not appropriate for our size of garden & too close to buildings behind! Is it worth seeing what happens next year or should I remove? It's sister plant is doing well in pot happily.

Can you not repot it? The roots won't have travelled far since August. Give it a decent sized pot, some good compost/soil and this time keep it somewhere where you can keep an eye out.

I am always amazed at the willingness of some (sadly not all) plants to survive, I had to do terrible things to my apple tree earlier in the summer, and it looked awful, but now has new growth and has even been flowering (in Spetember, the bees were as surprised as I was)