Help me save my bush

[wombpaloumbpa]

I am pretty rookie so please be kind.

At the end of last summer I noticed my box hedge looked in a bad state and was maybe dying. Thought to leave it over winter and see if it comes back in spring.

Long story short it's absolutely decimated by boxwood caterpillars and now looks like this

I've bought a boxwood moth trap to catch the moths they turn into so they don't lay more eggs but what else should I do? I didn't want to use pesticide but maybe I should just once?
Or is it actually too late?!

Would love to save it

Also tried picking them off by hand but there are honestly hundreds

They talked about this on Gardeners World yesterday evening, so that may be worth watching on catchup.

Oh wow! Thanks @fromaytobe I certainly will watch that

Was relieved to see this was in the gardening section 😂

Oh dear 😩

That's buggered. You won't be able to save it. The best thing you can do for other box-hedges is owners in your area is to burn it. So sorry - that's heartbreaking.

😭

@ElizabethVonArnim what about with pesticide?

Box caterpillar love these. They weave what looks like a cobweb over the bush and then eat every leaf possible. There is a product you can buy on Amazon called XenTari, they are sachets you mix with water and spray when you see the box moth (it’s white) I do mine once a month. Once you see the box moth the caterpillars follow shortly after. Once the hedge is sprayed they stop munching within an hour. It’s a monthly job done from April to Oct, saved my hedge and it recovered over the autumn and winter months and is back to full glory. Have a look at the reviews. It kills the caterpillar but doesn’t harm anything else, ladybirds, butterfly’s , birds etc.

@Anjo2011 oh really wow! I'll have a look now. Would like to give it all I've got to save it before giving up! Was yours looking as dicey as mine though?

Me too! I wondered what the bush-related disaster could have been 😆

Sorry about your hedging OP, it looks really neatly cut so has obviously been well cared for before the caterpillars got it 😞

Yes it was dreadful. I thought it was a spiders web and didn’t do anything and then it covered the whole bush in the front garden and I saw it looking very bare. Read up and saw the info on box caterpillar. It’s quite a new thing apparently, last four or five years. My hedge has been in for around 20 years. I did think about replacing it but it’s an expensive business! Saw the Xentari recommended and thought it was worth a try, I only use half a sachet per time now it’s under control. It will take a while to recover and I have to keep an eye on it but now I know what to expect I can spray as soon as I see the signs. I didn’t find the moth trap did any good, just look for the caterpillars and then spray. The reviews speak for themselves. Def worth a try.

Just to add , the caterpillars can pretty much destroy the whole hedge in a matter of days once they start eating it.

@Anjo2011 that's exactly what I thought, some sort of spider webs all over it. Well I've just ordered some of the product and can't wait to give it a spray down. Will have to be vigilant and hope for the best and see what happens. The wood itself seems alive still, it's bendy and green if I try to snap a bit so it's just the leaves that have all been eaten and the web stuff all over it.

@Sera1989 thanks... here's hoping I can revive it! It's itself because it separates our lawn from a flower boarder / path - sort of protecting the flowers from footballs, being trampled on etc

Get spraying as soon as you get it. Have a measure how much solution you will need so as not to waste it at it’s not cheap. I just mix mine in a cheap hand sprayer. It might recommend you do a spray the week after the initial one just to make sure you’ve got them all. I just go out periodically and give the hedge a bash and see if any moths come out, if they do I give it a spray. Spray right down to the bottom as they could be quite far down and do on a dry day when no rain expected. I’m confident it will work, just needs some patience to let it recover. Take some pics each month or so and you can see the progress and if it’s worth while.

Your thread title just made me snort

I hope your bush gets sorted

I'm no gardening expert but the title drew me in and I'm as pleased as others that we are discussing box hedges.

There is a real infestation issue. Where I live, all visible box hedges have died nearly 2 years ago. That's what I noticed whilst walking the dogs.

Apart from 1 house, theirs appeared to be dying and then they recovered. It's a set up of individual shaped bushes in a long row. Gradually, over a year or a bit longer, they started looking better apart from 1 getting worse and worse. This one was a bit further away from the main row. It's been looking dead for a while then it looked like new so I think this 1 bush has been replaced like for like.
All the others look really nice now. So a recovery is possible but I have no idea how and I'm really curious to know myself. There's none around when I walk to ask what they did. They do have gardeners doing stuff all the time, so I suspect the plants had constant/daily treatment of some sort.

I wondered if this was meant for the Sex board 😆

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Monty Don has dug his up and burned it. If he can't fix it we have no chance

XenTari is great. It's saved my box hedge last summer and I've done one spray this year so far. It's very effective and doesn't affect birds, butterflies or other insects either

@boxhedger I'm really relieved it doesn't effect birds. I'm going to give it a go before doing a Monty Don.

Good luck with it! The sachets are 3g or 5g each I think and mix into 3 litres of water so you need a sprayer that does 3litres. I bought both at the same time.

Xentari does work. We have several box trees some of which must be at least 50 years old and are trimmed into shape so I am keen to keep them. We are in rural East Sussex and the box caterpillars arrived properly last year. We picked hundreds of them off and sprayed and just about saved the bushes. This year we started spraying in March but already were infested. Next year I have diarised to start mid Feb.

It’s over I sorry to say. Dig it up and replace. One of my neighbours has just planted about 10 smaller plants. They’ll be gone by end of year. I do think garden centres should stop selling box as it’s not cheap and just won’t last