Ligustrum is in the large group of plants that respond beautifully to a full rejuvenation pruning. Cut them cleanly back to the ground after all chance of frost is over. Probably about now in your area? I wouldn't fertilize. Azaleas respond wonderfully, too, by the way.

Regarding the maintenance on your plants, avoid any heavy pruning or fertilization past August. In your climate, both of those tasks induce vegetative growth, something you do NOT want to happen in the fall. Azaleas and ligustrum should not suffer freeze damage like this unless the cold snap has been very severe. Making sure that they do not enter the winter season with new growth is important. Bottle brush can be more cold sensitive.

Thanks for the info. I did save the azaleas that I replaced. They are in some large pots now and have several new shoots coming up. I went ahead and pruned the damaged ligustrums to the ground. I pulled back the mulch and there are new shoots coming up.

Fertilize when they need it. Plants from mild climates grow late into fall and get damaged in a hard winter anyway, fertilizing in fall (if fertilizing is needed) enables them to bounce back better the following spring.

Fall is the best time to fertilize fully hardy plants. Conditions in spring are less favorable. The conventional wisdom has it backwards.

I'm dropping in late, but I have a waxleaf ligustrum in my yard (was there when I bought the house) - was pretty much the size of a tree before Hurricane Katrina... Some other trees fell into it and snapped it in half about 10 feet up the "trunk"
I didn't really know what it was, and I figured it was done for. While we were cleaning up, I cut it off at the ground with a chainsaw. Then I decided to see if I could get the roots out of the ground and plant another Gardenia there... (I have a lot of those). So I dug up all around it and hacked up and yanked out every root I could find, and even pounded on the stump with a splitting maul. I got the stump loose, but never did get it all the way out. So I gave up and planted a baby photinia right in front of the old stump last october.

Now the photinia is about 4 feet tall, and the waxleaf is about 5' - Go figure. So if anyone is looking for a idiot proof shrub, consider this one - it's hard to kill. I planted two more little ones last week. I have to have pretty good shrub presence along the woods edge to shade out the bad stuff, or my yard gets overgrown with all kinds of wisteria and air potato vine and other weed.

Some areas leaf spot is spoiling Fraser photinia plantings.

My ligustrum froze and looked awful during the winter. We are enjoying an early spring and they are now leafing out. They are only about 18 in hight. Should I just leave them alone at this point?

Mine look dead. They are 50 years old and quite large but what I see is that cutting them to the root could possibly salvage them.

linda.. start your own post.. include pix.. and some info on your plants... and a big city location .... im going to guess TX cold wave??

otherwise.. all you did was make a statement ... if you want comments.. give us something to comment on

ken

We have a row of Ligustrum that we planted 14 years ago as a privacy fence. They were beautiful until the recent "0" degree freeze we had in East Texas. All the leaves are gone and some of the thinner branches appear dead. As a novice I don't know how much pruning if any I should be doing. Cutting them off just above ground level I cannot bring myself to do. Any help is very appreciated. Rob

Cut off what looks dead and ugly and leave the rest. And mulch the soil around them with wood chips if it is bare or thinly covered.

To mulch or not to mulch? It shouldn’t even be a question. – The Garden Professors™

Thank you for getting back to me ! I will bend a few branches and see if there is any green left inside the bark as a verification. Is that a reasonable method ?

How is your ligustrum now? I have one lollypop tree that has few buds... not enough to keep it. I am in Dallas tx, I still hope it will recover

We did some heavy pruning of all 9 15 yr old trees. There are some small buds coming out at the base of the main trunks. I am not sure what to make of this yet, but I will continue watering them (fertilized earlier) before making a decision. These "shrubs" stood over 10 ft. tall and served as a privacy fence between us and the neighbor.

As a pro-active measure we planted 8 "sweet olive" shrubs in between the suffering legustrum. If,, in the next year we decided to cut them off at the base, then we at least have something else in place to create another privacy fence. Its a sad situation because they were so full and healthy with large trunks and expansive roots. Rob - in Tyler

My wax leaf ligustrums are about 12 to 15 feet tall and suffered some freeze damage from the winter low temps. I've left them alone until now but they have leafed out in places but some still have very dead appearing areas and some of those areas are rather large. Should I cut back just the dead limbs or should I prune the whole canopy back. I've never had them be this damaged and I kept hoping they were coming back. Please help Wayne in Arkansas.

I have removed all my huge Ligustrum wax leaf topiaries... sad how expensive they were but they are so not good looking any longer and it will take a long time for them to recover if at all. I will stay away from them in the future, it was a bad investment for me. I am in DFW area.