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Can this laurel be brought back to life?

Apparently someone sprayed our Portuguese laurel with herbicide. Can it be brought back to life or is it a lost cause?

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  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,542
    Look very closely right at the base of the plants and see if anything is shooting. 
    If you scrape back the bark ,if it's green then there is hope ( but no guarantee ) if it's brown then it's dead.
    Devon.
  • treehugger80treehugger80 Posts: 1,923
    it looks like somewhere between door-nail and dodo (as in 'dead as a') unfortunately,

    was it a malicious spraying or accidental?
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 86,049
    Are you sure it's the effect of herbicide?  It looks to me as if it could be severe drought as it's the bushes that are under the big trees which will have taken all the moisture out of the soil just there. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • it looks like somewhere between door-nail and dodo (as in 'dead as a') unfortunately,

    was it a malicious spraying or accidental?
    I suspect is was malicious due to the sharp demarcation between the living and dead laurel. 
  • Are you sure it's the effect of herbicide?  It looks to me as if it could be severe drought as it's the bushes that are under the big trees which will have taken all the moisture out of the soil just there. 
    I took another shot from a wider angle. The trees are over the living laurel as well as the dead and though the living is smaller than the rest of the hedge, I think it would've been affected as well and there wouldn't have been a dramatic line between the dead and living laurel.


  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 86,049
    edited August 2018
    It's not the fact that the trees are over the laurels ... rather that in that particular area the roots of the large tree will have out-competed the laurels for moisture. Have the laurels been watered during the hot weather?  They will each have needed several gallons of water a day in order to survive in that position. 

    The fact that the demarcation between the living and the dead is so clear indicates to me that the problem stems from the roots of the two individual plants and therefore drought is the most likely cause. 

    Any herbicide sprayed or poured will not have had such a clear demarcation as appears in your picture, killing all the leaves on one plant and none of those on the neighbouring plant, even where the plants are touching. 

    I really think that any hedge plants will struggle planted so close to such mature trees, particularly ones such as those with shallow and very thirsty roots. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • LynLyn Posts: 22,857
    I would agree with Dove there. If they’d been sprayed it would have touched the next door plants, the leaves are touching and overlapping. I think drought. 
    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

  • Question: If it was drought how could some leaves have died and some survived on the same plant?
  • glasgowdanglasgowdan Posts: 632
    It's actually quite easy to spray one plant in a line and not the next. You only need to spray half the plant for the whole thing to die and brown off. 

    Taragem have you any other reason to believe they've been sprayed?
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