Absolute novice - help! Reviving front garden
Matreshka
Posts: 1
hi all,
im absolutely new to gardening and hope I can draw upon your knowledge to help with my front hedge problem. 4 buxus balls were killed as a matter of days, having looked it up it appears that it was due to scale insect, when I was digging plants out I saw lots of caterpillars too and those seem to be box plant ones. Now I want to order new box plants and lavender to plant in their place and dont know if I need to replace ground, pour insecticide all over it or leave it for now and re plant in a month? I don't want to spend money for the plants to be killed again in a few days... :-( also, is it good time to plant now?
many thanks!!! Your help is really appreciated xx
0
Posts
What a shame, the scale insect & Caterpillars are unrelated problems. Box also suffers from Box blight which if you have watched GW you will see even Monty Don has had to get rid of most of his Box Balls & hedging. You may wish to consider an alternative to Box such as Ilex Crenata, Lornicera Nitida or even Privet. I would wait till late summer early Autumn to plant. The soil is still warm to encourage good root growth to let the plants establish. Good strong plants that a growing vigorously are much more able to resit attacks from pest & diseases, but nothing is immune..