z5 is about half the US and wildly divergent.. lets start with where you are ...

was the lawn sprayed....

describe winter ...

is that the driveway?

ken

I would suggest taking samples into your local extension office for a diagnosis. You want to confirm it is NOT boxwood blight and just a more easily adjusted cultural issue. What kind of box are they? Some varieties are a lot more cold tolerant than others.........

All my Buxus sempervirens varieties died to the snowline in temperatures that flirted with -22F. The previous extreme low since they were planted was -18F and they were ok with that.

In contrast, my two hybrids (Green Velvet & Green Mountain) have never experienced any damage...they are B. sempervirens x hardier Buxus species.

Cold damage may be your culprit depending on what variety was planted.

Smivies, I think mine are Green mountain varieties. It is so strange because so many of them did not suffer at all, then I had ones that were totally destroyed. All the same varieties

Gardengal48, i don't suspect blight, I took it to the garden center and they confirmed that as well. It's just so puzzling.

Roots were healthy as well. Im leaning towards the cold damage being the culprit as Smivies suggested.

Should these be protected in the winter ? I certainly don't need to go through this again next spring

I have a Green Mountain, and it is currently about 6 ft tall and 4 ft wide. So the spacing of those boxwoods is completely out of reality if they are Green Mountains. My suspicion is that they are some kind of more tender box, and it was nothing more complicated than winter kill.

AW, no salt and yes they are next to the driveway, there are some on each side of these that were perfectly fine

mad_gallica I have a few different kinds, these happened to be the reaaaally small ones when planting, i have some big ones around as well, some of those were ok and some not. I spaced them per specs on the tag to form a hedge around the walkway, I have new ones ready to go in, I’ll space them out a little further

Was the snow from the driveway draining to this spot? We find that enough salty snow sticks to the vehicles so that areas that get snow drainage or snow piles can be effected.

NHBabs I thought about that as well but when we snow blow its on a slope and the snow is usually tossed 3 feet away from the area further down the slope, they are located higher up. My town uses sand vs salt in the winter

I suppose I should try to find some creative ways to keep them protected in the colder months, definitely don’t want to go through replacing them again

How did the garden center know it wasn't box blight? What did they say?

They checked them over when I returned the dead boxwoods, they were fairly certain it is cold damage.

Could it be blight? Anything is possible but with the nasty cold snap we had in April cold damage is the more likely culprit I think..

best i can do is replant and see if it happens again, hopefully not cause at that point I’ll just have to give up my love for boxwoods lol

Probably not Boxwood Blight...if it's truly Green Mountain, that variety is only moderately susceptible to Boxwood Blight. If it's a highly susceptible English Box variety, the cold temperatures last winter would have killed them anyway, not Boxwood Blight.

The replacements for them were both Green Mountain and Green Velvet depending on the boxwood that was replaced (I took a close look at the tags yesterday), I had a few more not pictured, so I suspect the previous ones were of the same varieties

Smivies, do you do any kind of winter protection on your boxwoods?