If you do a good Google internet search on photinia leaf spot, you will find out that this is a very common problem. Here are a few of the cultural factors that can make it worse:

Planting too closely together. Over fertilizing. Shearing to maintain a hedge.

You sound as if you've neglected this problem until the plant is in serious shape. To be truthful, at this stage and even long before this, the typical recommendation would be to remove the plants entirely and plant something else.

Expecting to these plants to recover without rather extensive treatments with chemical fungicides is wishful thinking. This is a disease that WILL not go away with simple cultural practices, but must be treated chemically and repeatedly so.

If this were my hedge, it would have been removed quite some time ago. However, if you wanted to mess with it a while longer, you could try a drastic rejuvenation pruning, and commence on fungicide applications on a regular basis. Cutting your hedge back to 6 inch stumps will force all new growth to emerge from the bottom of the plants. If these photinia have not been too stressed out (and I truly expect that they have), an enormous amount of new growth will emerge. This will have to be sprayed according to the directions of your various fungicides. You should plan on purchasing two or three products so that you can rotate them. Your extension service can help you with making chemical suggestions. You may have to spray as often as once every ten to fourteen days.

Red Tips, under normal conditions, respond remarkably to rejuvenation pruning. If you decide to try this procedure, do not fertilize. In your location, you could get away with doing this at this time of year. Do a search on rejuvenation pruning, also, so that you know I'm not making it up. Many folks just can't believe that such a drastic measure is possible.

The above is excellent advice. But you will find enthusiasm for chemical approaches in the very ecologically conscious PNW few and far between. Our climate is just very encouraging to the development of photinia leafspot as well as a huge assortment of other fungal problems. Many reputable nurseries in the area have simply stopped selling problematic plants like the photinia in favor of less disease prone selections.

My primary suggestion would be to remove the plants and replace with something less inclined to require the degree of maintenance and attention photinia will - Pacific wax myrtle (a native) or Portuguese laurel, for example. Otherwise, I would also encourage the rejuvenation pruning and any cultural improvements before resorting to chemical controls, which will only delay the inevitable anyway.

The leaf spot has just occured since May of this year. These plants were inherited to us when we bought the house earlier this year. We had a really wet Spring.

I've done a lot of research on the web about leaf spot and it all says the same thing and that is to spray. It just doesn't say with what and when to do it.

I looked up rejuvenation pruning as you suggested and that sounds very drastic. These plants are well over 15 feet tall and to take them down to nothing sounds drastic. There isn't any other way of killing the disease?

Thanks
Julie

The time to apply the spray is early spring, this to protect the newly developing shoots. In other words, it's too late now.

For now, rake up and discard all dropped leaves, and avoid watering such that the leaves get wet.

And you can try the rejuvenation pruning suggested by rhizo. Even so, understand that our climate is very beneficial to this, and other, leaf diseases.

My red tips are 5 years old and some are 10 feet tall. Their trunks are several inches in diameter. I cannot use any of my pruning tools to perform rejuvenation pruning. I would need a saw to get thru these trunks. But is a saw OK?

Yes, they have leaf spot again for the 3rd Spring in a row. And yes, I have tried different kinds of, expensive, off the shelf fungicides only to see it come back again.

I want to keep them - it's heck to dig them up or buz them flat to the ground. And besides, their root system has probably already dominated everything underground for many square yards most likely making it harder for replacement shrubs to take root.

So, I am interested in rejuvi pruning. But with what and how do I prune such thick trunks? And is it worth it?

Pretty old post here, but I'll chime in with my two cents worth as I seem to be winning the battle. I, too, wanted to keep them because they provide somewhat of a sound barrier, and I didn't want to go through the trouble of digging them up. So here's my story:

My red tips had probably never been trimmed in the 13 years since the house was built. When we bought it last spring, they were all 10-15 tall, and at least 10 feet in diameter - all comming from a two foot cluster at the base. We live in a subdivision in Texas, so backyards aren't that large to begin with. Oh yeah, and I have about 20 of these things spaced about three feet apart.

Well, I starting cutting. And cutting. And cutting. Down to about seven feet tall. I got about half of them done last summer. Almost immediately, all the new growth started showing leaf spot. (Evidently, new growth is a lot more suseptible to leaf spot than mature leaves are.)

I did some research and found that fungicides containing chlorothalonil or myclobutanil are effective. I tried spraying the existing leaves, but there were so many, I don't think I ever got complete coverage. This leaf spot is very "contagious" so it doesn't take much for it to just get passed back and forth.

This spring, I went all out. I cut everything down to about 4', and stripped every single leaf off. As the new growth started coming in, I started spraying religously. Every other Saturday, I mix up a couple gallons and go to town. So far, no spots. And you have to make sure you keep any fallen leaves picked up, as well.

It's a little expensive. I think a bottle of the fungicide is about $12 and lasts about a month. Not nearly as expensive as the websites I've seen about leaf spot led me to believe it would be.

That's my experience. I'm by no means an expert, but I did a lot of research and it seems to be working. It is a lot of work, though. I have probably 40 hours invested in lopping, sawing, cutting, and bundling. But if you have an easier way to remove brush than setting it at the curb, that will help. I think I spent more time bundling than I did cutting. The spraying is the easiest part.

My method of cutting was pretty haphazard. They were so dense, I just started cutting branches as I saw them. I lopped off all the small branches with loppers first. (Buy a GOOD set. You'll need something pretty heavy-duty.) Then the bigger braches that were left at the end, I cut with a chainsaw. There's no real method to it, and I think it's pretty hard to screw up. Red-tips are very resilient.

Well, good luck. I hope this helps.

Wow. I forgot all about this one. It's funny that it should come back around after all this time.

Well, the red tips did pretty well all last year. Then this spring, the spots came back, and came back hard. So... Every single one got cut down last weekend. Problem solved.

Now, off to dig up 14 stumps...

Our hedge (inherited) got this disease really bad after the severe summer and severe winter, as did everyone's around town. After doing my research, I concluded we had to get rid of these 15 bushes completely. But after we hacked them down and dug up the stumps, I am seeing everyone's skeleton Red Tips coming back to life and am starting to regret it. Did I chop mine all down for nothing? Or will everyone's bushes get it again?

I've never seen Red Tips recover completely and continue to be disease-free. Not ever with regular applications of chlorothalonil or myclobutanil. I do not have a single regret over tearing all of mine out - except maybe that I didn't do it sooner.

Don't mess with the chemicals mentioned here. They will murder photinias. Neem Oil has worked a miracle on my 19 photinias, which I too use as a hedge to block out traffic. One good thing to say about photinias is that, despite being prone to disease, they are very strong and can endure heavy manipulation. Mine are still young, 4 years old, and it's inevitable that they get sick in winter. But once the sun comes out in early spring, I cut off ALL infected leaves so that only new leaves and buds remain. In a month, those new leaves will be fully grown and lots of new ones will be on the way. You don't have to kill them and plant something else. But you need to be more courageous than usual to break the cycle of infection. Stay away from the chemical treatments, which at the very least will prevent flowering.

Repeated shearing or pruning to remove affected growth is far more likely to prevent flowering than the application of fungicides to control Photinia leaf blight. And recommended fungicides will NOT "kill" the photinias any more than the fatalities caused by repeated defoliation each season as a result of this disease. Fungicides do not kill plants if applied properly - they kill fungal pathogens.

Photinia leaf blight can present differently and with varying degrees of severity depending on where the grower is located. In moist climates or humid summer areas, this disease can be devastating to the shrubs and will ultimately kill them. If this is the case where you live -- and this thread is 6 years old, so who knows if anyone is reading -- then replacing these shrubs with something less troublesome and without the need for frequent chemical intervention is highly recommended.

There is a very good reason this shrub is no longer recommended or sold by better nurseries throughout much of the country.

Reviving an old thread to see if any of the previous posters have won this battle against leaf spot. We live in South/Central Texas. Our backyard has a mix of red tips and pittosporum as privacy hedges that create a stunning 15' tall wall of hedges that provide wonderful privacy and visual appeal. Unfortunately, these hedges have started succumbing to various ailments. The red tips have this dreaded leaf spot.

One side of the fence has red tips that were planted only 2 years ago. The rest of the plants have probably been planted 15+ years. I did some drastic pruning on the young ones and spent a weekend cutting every single spotted leaf off. They are only 6' talk and we're manageable. The older red tips are just too big to deal with in a similar fashion. I've been spraying Daconil every 7 days or so.

Just Wondering if I'm fighting a losing battle? I don't plan on replacing these hedges with anymore red tips or pittosporum (they are having a different issue and I have lost two - not sure if it is root rot, some other fungus, or just their natural life cycle). The pittosporum can't be sprayed with Daconil, I use Agri-fos on them. Oh, and most of my neighbors have these red tips as well, and they all have the disease. We had a wet fall and winter and I suspect the fungus is loving south Texas now

So any success stories?

Lastly, if I have to replace these, what is a good alternative? We're zone 9. Backyard is a mix of shaded and part-sun, but is becoming mostly shaded as our live oaks grow more. I would like a drought tolerant (although I have drip irrigation and can water them well during the hot summers) replacement that is hardy and disease resistant. Native would be great. I just need them to be able to grow to and be maintained at about 15' tall and have the ability to be trimmed into hedges. Thanks in advance!

If the disease is present now and common to your area (and that includes most of the southeast as well as the PNW), then there are no success stories :-(( It will be a constantly recurring issue that no amount of pruning or spraying will completely or permanently eradicate. The recommendation is to remove and replace with a less disease-prone plant.

Maybe try on your Texas Gardening forum for suggestions for an alternate hedge plant - what grows well in Texas is not the same as what grows well in the PNW!!

Well, we are trying to save our red tip photinia too. Have already sprayed two rounds of neem based fungicide(since early spring) on huge grown tall 20 to 25 plants... noticing new leaves growing without spots..... we are planning to try every possible way to restore these once upon a time beauty. I am even going to try mixing 1 tbs of baking soda powder per gallon of water along with the neem concentrate fungicide next. Copper based fungicide treatment is also in my plan. Have also used fertilizer spikes at the base to give its growth a boost. We are having high hopes.....we don't want to leave any room for regrets. We see skeletons of photonia every where around my area in San Antonio... it's very depressing to see such beautiful trees affected everywhere. Wish someone could come up with some solution to eradicate this problem for good. Hope these beautiful red tips don't become extinct! "Saving photonia"!!

"My" red tips have provided a wonderful barrier from the neighbor's yard for 30+ years. They are actually on the neighbor's property and were planted by the first homeowners and have grown to over 25 feet in height. The current homeowner rents the property and is not inclined to spend any $ to treat this disease. So, it saddens me to watch these beautiful trees die out. I noticed the leaves died out on a section closest to the road first and noticed spots infecting other areas. I can possibly treat my side as these trees are immense in depth and appear to be more affected on my side at the moment but to what avail? We have had a very wet spring in Maryland so I am sure the weather has greatly contributed to the spread of this disease. ☹️

This is an interesting post. To add to the knowledge, I had a black spot problem with my Red Tips as well.

I didn't do a lot of pruning. However, I hit them hard and often ( every 30 days for 4 months ) with "BioAdvanced" Fugus Control for Lawns pellets and Black Spot and Powdery Mildew spray. I was told by a professional that you can't just spray the leaves. You must also treat the ground around the Red Tips.

This method seemed to work for me without heavy pruning. After you kill off the black spot, at least, make sure to treat before Spring growth each year. Again, now, the trick for me is to kill the black spot in the ground and on leaves before the spring growth.

My Red Tips have been black spot free now for a few seasons (2021-2024) and the one that had stunted growth is currently over 12 feet with full foliage (10' wide).

So, my Red Tips have good sun, air circulation and are not crowed together (planted at least eight feet apart). So, I didn't have those problems.

Again, I now use the "BioAdvanced" fungus killer pellets on the ground and spray leaves twice annually ( early spring and late summer ). I'm sure there are other good chemicals out there. But, these two by BioAdvanced worked for me.