Why do my Portuguese laurels keep dying?

[Nichola2310]

Last summer we had a landscaping company come and re-sow our gardens and plant Portuguese laurels as a perimeter hedge, which required almost 200 plants.

Shortly after this almost all the plants started to die, the leaves all turned brown and fell off. Landscapers refused any responsibility and left the job partially unfinished.

About a month ago my husband bought 10 small Portuguese laurels (£5 each) and 12 large ones (£25 each) and planted these with bone meal on the advice of the garden centre.

Of the 10 small ones 3 look like they're dying and from the large ones, one has lost loads of its leaves, and on 2 of them, the leaves in the centre are starting to turn yellow, so I fear they're not going to survive either.

I don't understand what going wrong. We've spent a lot of money in the quest for a hedge and are getting nowhere!

Any thoughts/advice?

Are you watering them?

Yes every few days. The garden centre has said a deep watering once a week but it's been quite hot/dry here the last couple of weeks so we've watered them a bit extra.

It could be environmental, soil type, position etc. However I'd say the likeliest problem is that they've been planted in summer both times. The dryness and heat may just be too much for them to cope with. I always plant hedging in autumn as it's just so hard to keep them watered enough in the summer.

A good watering once a week is better than a shorter watering every day

How much water? Each watering would need to be about 30gallons

@MereDintofPandiculation so over a gallon per plant?

Following as I have the exact same issue.

@HasaDigaEebowai

A good watering once a week is better than a shorter watering every day

Guess who watched monty don 😃

I have a Portuguese Laurel hedge which we put in, they need to be watered hard for the first few weeks op till the roots go deep enough, I suspect you’re not watering enough, so they are drying out and dying.

We put ours in three years ago and although they were much more mature than the ones you’re putting in , about four to five foot each plant we are now keeping it trimmed at eight foot. Even now I still water it when it’s particularly dry.

Monty is Gos in this house

God!

[quote Nichola2310]@MereDintofPandiculation so over a gallon per plant?[/quote]
Yeah, that was what I was working on. I think I worked out some years ago that an inch of rain (or maybe half an inch) was 2 gallons per square yard. It's ball park figures I'm talking about, just to get across the idea that it's a lot of water needed - most new gardeners use far too little on newly planted trees.