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Poorly variegated holly tree
anne_nightingale
Posts: 1
Last Spring this holly tree (trained to a cone shape)started dropping leaves.During the heat wave last year it lost everything and looked blasted.( at this time I found some fungus nearby) After a while I saw evidence of new leaves . I cut out the dead wood as best I could. Fed the soil with bonemeal and added some new soil .There are now more leaves but small in size and many on the trunk.
Should I heavy prune it , let it carry on or cut it down?
treetops
0
Posts
It could be very dry ... a lot of trees are still suffering from the effects of last year’s drought and a very dry winter and spring. I can also see what looks like leylandii behind it ... that/they will have been sucking all the moisture out of the soil for months and months.
I would give your holly 5 buckets full of water on every day that we don’t have at least an hour of heavy rain.
If you do that for at least a month it will go a little way to getting some moisture down to the roots.
After a month I would give your holly two buckets of water every other day until the end of October unless we have a very wet autumn.
Hopefully your holly will begin to pick up and will look much better next year ... I love hollies 😊
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.