You did not mention watering. Since these are on a slope, did the water get down to the roots before runoff? Did you build a dam down slope to collect water?

tj

you have really given us nothing to go on ....

when planted.. how...

watering.. mulching....

size.. age ... etc ...

nor do you tell us how you rule out bugs nor disease ....

one thing for sure.. they are not hungry ... in good soil....PERIOD ...

i suspect poor watering on a hill... where water tends to run off.. rather than soak into the root zone ...

ken

If they were planted recently, the most likely problem is that the rootballs ran dry.

What was the irrigation schedule early on?

And by what sort of system.

Please post some pictures.

how many of the 100 are going brown ?

if only a few , consider yourself lucky , and water the rest

ron

Not familiar with the plant, but in any junipers susceptible to Phomopsis tip blight, like Embo said, once it's this far advanced, it's pretty much over. Not entirely sure about this but I suspect a poor plant choice for the locale.

+oM

"Great dirt" can mean just about anything. The species you selected prefers very sandy, infertile soils. If the soil holds moisture to any significant degree it may be too wet for them or they may be having trouble establishing because the roots cannot penetrate the soil. You chose a good variety but it will take the proper growing conditions to do well long-term.

As a side note, the general public thinks it is now necessary to "rip up" the roots of every plant these days. Many smaller plants will not tolerate this treatment and I do not recommend it unless it is abundantly clear that the plant will suffer long-term damage based on the current root system.

Was planting some perennials last year with a client who thought this exact same way and she ripped a coneflower root system to the point that there was nothing left (it later died). I said, "The plants are barely rooted in, you don't need to rip apart the root system." She said, "Oh! I thought that was the correct way to do it for all plants these days."

Thanks all so much for the feedback! Greatly appreciated! We have two slopes and on one we planted bar harbor junipers and had only one die after a winter due to freeze/thaw pushing it up and it didn't take after I put it back down further into the ground - the few others that popped up due to same did great after getting back into the dirt. We have actually 175 blue pacific junipers and probably about 20 are browning up - I did have two that died due to too much gravel in the dirt (the prior owner put a bunch of gravel next to the driveway for solar lights and I didn't take all of the gravel out). We are in Roan Mountain, TN - elevation 3800 feet - and our dirt is brown in color - with rocks, of course - :-) We have planted so many different plants and researched and picked those that do well in zones above our zone due to the elevation. I'm trying to attach some pics - will see if they attached. I planted the junipers by taking out any rocks found and watering the hole. I believe I overdid the break up of the rootballs on some of them and they are suffering because of it as the rest are doing great. Will have to replace them I'm sure but out of 175 replacing about 20 is not too bad I guess! :-)

My pics did not upload unfortunately - clicked photo link below and selected the pics but not showing up here as far as I can tell.

Oh - and our zone is 6 but we plant 5 or lower.

i came back.. just to echo what killer said above ... even with all my experience ... if i planted a hundred of anything.... i would be ecstatic with a 90% success rate ... and write the rest off... to problems inherent in the pot ... or as you noted... the gravel problem ...

ken