What Has Happened To My Box Hedge

[TheyJustDontFit]

Can anyone please help. My box hedge is about 15 years old. Bern lightly pruned twice a year. Had always been healthy, over the last 2 weeks it has died.

It is kept on our boundary by a picket fence and our previous neighbours always allowed me to prune their side to keep it within our boundary.

New neighbours of just over a year do not allow this. It is their 2nd home and they are not there often. They leave one car in their drive when they are not in residence, right up to our fence so I can't access it at all. They appear to have cut it back on their side recently and the hedge dying has happened since then.

Any ideas? It is like this right through the hedge, which is made up of 5 plants. It's about 4 feet tall, in line with the top of our fence. No other plants are affected.

Such a shame. Definitely replace with something other than Box. I knew before I even read your first post what the problem was as its everywhere down south. So frustrating.

At least you know it is a natural thing and you won't spend the next 10 years thinking your neighbours have poisoned it.

I had the same thing ( SE too) and treated mine with nematodes ( safe fir other wildlife) from eBay. Killed the caterpillars and it’s sort of growing back. Next door gardener said the moths only lay eggs in Spring so spray then.
I was listening to gardeners question time and they said feed and water loads and it might recover. Also Jackdaws are starting to eat the caterpillars so once they’ve got a taste for them nature might right itself.

It was mentioned on Friday's GQT - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001q11p

I think it was near the beginning, but I wasn't paying full attention, so could be wrong.

Sorry, might be unrelated, but we have a lot of brown trees and bushes currently where we are (Cambridgeshire). It started last year around mid-June and seems worse this year. I thought it might have been the dry weather but it's seems to be more of a problem in certain areas only. Cannot find anything about it in the news or local FB groups, but I've really seen anything like it before.

I saw Monty talk about this the other day, he said leave it and wait until next year to see if it get new growth, if not it’s dead, but it needs spraying with the stuff that get rid of what’s caused in …hopefully it will come in again next year

Yeah this happened to all of ours and it was the caterpillar.

Replace it with Lonicera Nitida it's an evergreen Honeysuckle.

I’m afraid this problem is country wide, here in Manchester lots of gardens were affected earlier this year.

Chinese box moth is Europe-wide. I really feel for those French châteaux with acres of 500 year-old box to try and protect.

Feels like there's been quite a big attack in the UK this year. I came home at midnight a couple of months ago and there were about 2 dozen of them flapping around in my little courtyard garden. And there's another wave going on now.

I have about 10 plants that have been getting attacked for the past 5 years or so. Having faffed around with various sprayers I now just soak them with xen-tari from a watering can.

Also: they lay their eggs in my fig tree. I told the RHS this years ago but they wouldn't believe me. But it's definitely a thing.

Thanks for all the advice. I think I am going to replace it. I don't have huge amounts of time for gardening so I need to have something that doesn't need too much looking after.

I'll check out your recommendations for replacements. Liking the sound of yew.

And you're right I was beginning to think it may have been poisoned

It happened to our box hedge last year.
I had previously seen the moths flying out of them in the evenings.
We have two low lying box hedges on either side of the door.
They smelled dreadful too. A bit like rotting fish.
I thought they were finished but one seems to have recovered, the other one is looking poorly still.
I am In Ireland.

Replace with Red Robin. So much nicer.

10 Photinia Red Robin Hedging 25-40cm Evergreen Plants Supplied in 10cm Pots by Sunnyside Nurseries amzn.eu/d/cEZJgjR

We've replaced ours with mix of plants, Red Robin, Yew, Beech, Hawthorn and a small Holly. We're trying to replicate a traditional type farmland hedge which is full of birds and wildlife.

I miss our box as it was beautiful and gave us privacy. I wonder if some box plants may hold out better against the caterpillar, but that may be decades before it all becomes clearer?

Mine got this last year. It's grown back completely!

Could it be box blight?
I lost one box plant last and another this year and I just assumed it was that, but I might have the caterpillar problem too

Here's a picture of ours with the caterpillars before they were picked off

Box moth on my bathroom ceiling right now.

My in-law’s are also in Bath, and they had this happen to their hedge too. They noticed a small patch before going on holiday, but thought it would be ok to sort it out once they returned from their holiday. Unfortunately it was completely decimated by the time they returned home 😞.

Oh no! Mine is dying too and I’d never heard of box moth. I’m gutted, it’s taken me years to grow the hedge and it looked so nice.

Same in my garden in Oxfordshire and some of the surrounding gardens. I have shrubs and herbaceous perennials dying, and some trees in the surrounding area are looking as though they are on the way out. So I thought my box hedge turning brown was part of the same problem, but it obviously isn’t.
I’ve been wondering whether the shrubs are dying because of a combination of hot dry weather last year, a cold winter, and a wet spring with the soil sodden for a long time.

Did anyone else's box hedge start to smell horrendously too when attacked by the moth / caterpillar ?

Replace with yew or ilex crenata or if you live somewhere mild Pittosporum, or you can even get some small evergreen rhododendrons so that your hedge flowers in spring.

I'm in North Wales and currently unaffected by box moth or box blight, but have interplanted my box hedge with ilex crenata and when they get established I'll start taking cuttings and growing on new plants ready. The only reason I used box at all was because the previous owner had newly planted a load so I moved them where I needed them rather than composting them, as didn't want them where they originally were.

I’m in Essex and myself and my neighbours all had our hedges done like this last year. I cut mine very very short and it seems to be growing back. Others have left theirs and it’s remained the same. Some managed to deter them.

Interplanting now with other species is such a good idea. If you are lucky enough to be spared the caterpillar or not you'll have a fine hedge regardless.

I would caution against rhododendron having volunteered to clear the stuff from local woodland. It may not be a problem where you are yet, but when it gets out there it is a total thug and leaves no light getting to the woodland floor and leaves the soil almost infertile for anything else.