This is bad news. The disease was discovered in CT in Oct 2011 and then in RI and MA in Jan 2012. I have 4 english boxwood and they look very healthy right now. I haven't noticed any boxwood in my area with the disease.

I think japanese holly would be a good substitute.

My sympathies! My one boxwood still looks healthy, so it isn't here yet.

For low hedges, perhaps lavender or santolina? They would look different, but get used for knot gardens.

In deer-free areas, yew might work for some applications.

Oh, no! I have a couple of boxwood-edged gardens, and I've got my fingers crossed that nobody will bring this blight over the bridges to the Cape. Realistically, I don't suppose there's any chance of that, and it will be here at some point. Mine are mostly plain old 'green velvet' - I bought a couple dozen as barely-rooted cuttings, long ago.

Lavender is a nice edger, but it requires a lot of sun, so it's not as versatile as boxwood, and not evergreen. Provence, and Grosso in particular, look good almost all the way through winter, at least here.

I've used winter heath and hellebores as edgers, but those certainly look different from boxwood - the heath sprawls, at least the way I grow it, and the hellebores are much more informal. Both are evergreen, technically, although the hellebores have to be cut to the ground in late winter. The heath takes a surprising amount of shade, although mine are in deciduous shade, so I don't know how they'd do in perpetual shade. The hellebores don's seem to care about how much sun they get, and make a really nice edge to a deep bed.

So sorry for your loss, Dee!

Dee, I have one variegated boxwood, that I have not thought was very vigorous at all. It's hardly grown for me. It's in part shade and I'm thinking of moving it to more sun. So, I would guess they would be more vulnerable. Sorry for your losses, that's awful! Maybe a substitution would be Japanese Hollies. Don't they have some dwarf varieties too?

I have a lot of boxwood too. A few different varieties. The only trouble I have is with the cupped tips of the branches, which drives me crazy. Can your boxwood actually develop this blight without it being introduced into your garden from a new plant? One thing I've done with mine is to keep taking cuttings and rooting them, since it is so easy to do and that way I have a few young plants in the wings. Not sure if that would be a strategy that would help out, or if the young plants would develop the blight too, since they are potted? And none of my neighbors have boxwood, so I wonder if that is a factor.

Oh no Dee, that makes me concerned. I spent a lot of money a few years ago on the upright form of them, Graham Blandy and they don't need to be dying on me. I also have a beautiful variegated one that has been growing so well these past few years.

Thanks for the comments guys. I was hoping to get some photos up but my daughter and therefore my camera are not here at the moment.

I don't know where this came from. The only new boxwoods I've introduced were from Bluestone, as I added the dwarf ones to my hedge (mine are Green Velvet also, DTD), and they "looked" very healthy. I don't know if in the early stages this is something that can be seen, but I noticed nothing out of order with my new plants. As a matter of fact I just got another Chicagoland with my Bluestone sale order a few weeks back and it looks great. I'm trying to figure out where to keep it so it doesn't get infected/affected! Neighbors may have boxwoods (I'd assume they do; doesn't everyone, lol?) but we are on almost-acre lots, and I wonder if it would spread that far? I guess it could, right?

The replacements for my friend's Chicagolands should be fairly easy. Actually, I had wanted to put ilex glabra in there to begin with, but she's not a holly fan (although I think, being a non-gardener, she had a very specific image of what "holly" looks like). It's just the expense and time wasted. And now that we've designed the beds around the boxwoods, the ilex may be a bit too large. Sigh, you know what that means... *pruning*. Accckkk!

My little hedge though, is another story. I really want to post a photo of these beds. They are very small, only about 4 feet long and 2 feet wide, being little rounded patches between my patio and my driveway - hard to describe. The hedge, if I replace it, needs to be kept rather short and narrow, so boxwood was perfect in this part-shade spot.

Ooh, I just realized I have a another boxwood in that bed, one that I got for free from when our swaps were at Young's. It's a nice, large plant... hope that isn't infected and I'll have to go right out and check. Darn...

PM2, a friend of mine used to have several beds surrounded by very low boxwood hedges, and every year we would shear the hedges and plant the cuttings into the hedge to continue it. It was quite tedious but certainly worked well, if you didn't mind waiting. I actually considered doing that, but decided just buying a few new ones from Bluestone were well worth the time and work of usiing cuttings. Now that my little hedge is infected, I can't do the cuttings anyway!

Dee

Dee, I have 'Green Mountain' which I bought a few of from Bluestone, too. And I have the Buxus sempervirens 'Suffruticosa' that I bought locally many years ago. Love those too, they're so slow growing. Then I have a third variety that I've forgotten the name of. I have to prune the NOID boxwood which is just two individual plants, but the Suffruticosa has fit perfectly on either side of the front steps and not needed pruning. But I do get those cupped leaves that I end up having to prune off. The 'Green Mountain' I hope to not have to prune. I really love boxwood and would love to get more varieties at some point. But a new blight makes me hesitate a little.

We used to have an old hedge that was tall and had to be pruned twice a summer. HATED that hedge. Ripped the whole thing out. We have a Maple that rains down helicopters that seem to all germinate every spring and that hedge was always full of Maple seedlings and if you missed a few, they'd be the devil to get out. But your application around a small bed with dwarfs sounds so great! I'm sorry you've had this problem now. What about the soil they were growing in? Is there a chance if you plant new ones, they will get the same blight? Is the blight soil borne or air borne?

You might want to call Bluestone and let them know what happened to your plants. They have such a great guarantee, maybe they would replace them for you?

I've never tried sticking boxwood cuttings into the ground. I use a large sweater box, that is opaque actually and the cover is solid and I fill it with a mix of 3/4 sand and 1/4 soil and just stick them in there and water them and in about 3 weeks they are rooted and I pot them up and let them hang around with the rest of the pots until they're big enough to use. I love to propagate, but I don't always take time to, there's so many other things that have to be done. And yes, Bluestone used to be so inexpensive it was worth it to just pick up some on a sale. I found another source for small boxwood plants, I think they were under $6. per plant. I'd have to look up the name if you are interested, let me know.

javaandjazz, I considered getting those 'Graham Blandy's and went with the Ilex 'Sky Pencil'. I would have been happy with either, but the 'Sky Pencil' was available and on sale. Both are very interesting accents.

This post was edited by prairiemoon2 on Sun, Jun 23, 13 at 9:26

Well, now I just don't know. Did some quick research and now I'm wondering if what I have is boxwood volutella blight, which is a bit different - although removal of the plant is still recommended on some websites. And if you don't remove the plant, the recommended steps sound like a lot of work - an awful lot of pruning out of dead branches, etc. The thing is, my boxwoods don't exhibit all the symptoms of either blight - neither the black markings on the stems of the boxwood blight, nor the "pink structures" on the lower branches of the volutella. Sigh.

Well, l hope I didn't get anyone TOO worried - I may have jumped the gun here. But I'm just not savvy enough to distinguish between these types of things, no matter how many pictures I have! I keep going back and forth in my diagnosis.

If anyone is interested in further reading, here are some links:

boxwood blight - http://www.remindernews.com/article/2013/04/09/boxwood-blight-a-new-disease-to-watch-for

http://www.ct.gov/caes/lib/caes/pdio/documents/presentations/douglas_ne_grows_2012_boxwood_blight_02-03-12_web_posting.pdf (warning, this has some very sad pictures in it, lol)

volutella leaf blight:
http://pnwhandbooks.org/plantdisease/boxwood-buxus-sp-volutella-leaf-and-stem-blight-canker

general info on boxwood problems:
http://www.americanboxwood.com/index.php/plantcare/boxwood-diseases

PM2, I had some trouble finding either a definitiive yes, you can replant or no, do not replant, but a few sources said that the diease can lurk in the soil for five years. Another sigh....

Dee

Oops, meant to include this link (below) as well...

Here is a link that might be useful: more sad news on boxwood blight

Dee, before I would pull them all out, or decide I couldn't replant, I'd go to the trouble of getting a diagnosis from a professional. I wouldn't trust my own judgement from photos either. I know that the MA extension at UMass has the ability if you send them a sample, to identify diseases. Although I've never used it. And not sure if they have that in CT. But I would seriously doubt you have to be from MA to use it and if your mailing it, it doesn't make much difference. It's fee based.

Or maybe you can call your local nurseries and ask if anyone there is capable of diagnosing a sample if you bring it in.

Yeah, I think I am going to do that. CT has an ag ext station and their site gives instructions for mailing diseased specimens. They seem to cater to larger operations (nurseries, perhaps) as it says to "send several plants". Hmm, I don't think so. I'm not going to pay shipping for something I am going to have to rip out anyway.

But, I may send one whole small boxwood and stems/leaves from others in several stages. I'll keep everyone posted.

Thanks!
Dee

I thought I had blight on my front garden hedge this spring but it wound up being an infestation of tiny bugs. I treated it with an organic soap solution and all the boxwoods in the front seem to be okay now. The initial ones are a bit weak looking but not a total loss.

For what it's worth. . . Maybe someone can benefit from my stupidity: Long ago, I noticed a problem with my boxwoods, did a quick google, and was certain that I had boxwood blight. Then I ignored the shrubs for quite a while. Recently I went online and discovered other boxwood fungal infections are NOT always fatal. Then it occurred to me to see if there is a diagnostic lab that would help me. There are quite a few of these diagnostic labs. The Michigan State University Diagnostic Lab has a fee of only $20. I e-attached some photos, filled out a form and mailed it with some clippings, and now I have received a report saying that my boxwoods have leafminers, psyllids, and mites! So my assumptions were WRONG! (MSU Diagnostic Lab says the always-fatal boxwood blight has not entered Michigan yet, by the way.)

Thanks for posting that info about a lab. Actually being able to factually identify something is such a help.

I wonder how your boxwoods are doing, Dee?

I ignored the problems with my boxwoods in the front and last year, they suddenly took a turn for the worse. Some of the branches started looking dead with straw colored foliage and I continued to see the cupped leaves. I didn't have time to deal with it last year, so this spring instead of pulling them out and buying new ones, I tried cutting them back as far as I could and only leaving a bare minimum of foliage on them. I am a slow worker and I finished one shrub and still working on the second. Meanwhile I watered really well, used organic Neptune's Harvest on it and I got a great flush of new growth. Some of the interior branches only had growth very low on the stems, but I may end up having enough there. After I had initial new growth, I went back and cut off all the remaining old foliage so that now only new foliage is on the shrub.

The second shrub I did a much more conservative first pruning and that didn't go as well, because I could see I still have some kind of infestation. In one area it reminded me of mealy bugs. So I made up a cayenne pepper/garlic/drops of soap spray and I'm using that to see if it will make any difference. The jury is still out.

I'm also going to continue to prune that second shrub until there is nothing but new foliage on it. And keep spraying both shrubs and watering and fertilizing and mulching. If that doesn't work, that's all I've got and they will have to come out. I'm organic too and I'm not willing to use something stronger.

If I continue to have problems, it's good to know I can send a sample away for a better diagnosis.

For leafminers, you use a spray at a very specific time in spring when the adult flies hatch (when the weigelas bloom), and/or a 12-month imidacloprid soil drench on an annual basis. For psyllids and mites, the treatment period is also in the spring. I'm too late for the springtime treatments this year. I bought a Fertilome imidacloprid soil drench product. [Fertilome Tree & Shrub Systemic Insect Drench, active ingredient 1.47% imidacloprid, $36 for one gallon.] This weekend I cut my shrubs back quite a bit. I still need to do more pruning to remove the deadwood and I may cut them even shorter today before applying the soil drench. The amount of insecticide that you use is geared to the height of the shrub, so it makes sense to hurry up and finish the pruning before I mix and apply the insecticide. I did find one study published in 2001 indicating the best insecticide for summer treatment is imidacloprid, by the way. Here is the URL for Mich State Univ article:

http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/pests_of_boxwood