Hi all, I have a woeful looking Portuguese Laurel bush and wonder if anyone can help.
I 'think' it's been infected with aphids, but not 100%. I'm not a gardener, in fact miles away from being one. Will the bush recover? I have given it a trim, feed, and also sprayed down with a hose to try and remove any aphids. I can't see anything on the leaves, but I did cut a sprig off and put it in a sealed sandwich bag, and a few days later I see lots of little black specs appeared in the bag (too small to see what they are by naked eye). I'm worried it will spread to the other healthy ones nearby. Any help appreciated.
It looks incredibly thirsty to me. I’d put a hose at the base and leave it on low pressure for a couple of hours every other day for a fortnight and see if that helps.
It won’t happen straight away … it takes a good while for laurels to produce new foliage.
🤞
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
How long has it been planted there @jasKkWgfowY and were they young shrubs? The one on the left of the three bushes doesn't look very healthy either and the middle one is showing something similar. Is the tree an ornamental plum? That too is showing stress. Without any more information, I'd take a wild guess and say lack of water is the problem.
The laurels were planted 14 months ago. The trees in between them are red robins and I'm certain are dead. They were planted badly by the nursery we bought them from (about 10 yrs ago). When the laurels were planted we dug massive holes to allow plenty of good soil and drainage. The laurels replaced some of the completely dead red robin trees. The artificial grass has been down 10 years. The ground where I live is very clay/heavy soil.
I purchased some leaky pipe last week, so will get it hooked up this weekend and get it on a timer and see where we look in a months time. I'll report back. I have been watering them for the last few weeks, but the ground was very dry before that. To be honest we haven't had much rain this year where I live (Essex).
As the trees have only been in for 14 months, that’s the problem, never good idea to plant big trees, it takes a lot of energy for a shrub to sustain that amount of top growth and make roots.
I know what I would do, but I don’t think you will like it, I would cut them down by at leat half, and water well, they soon make new growth once they’re well rooted.
If that fails, then buy new plants, bare roots in the winter at 3’ tall and immediately on planting, cut then down by a foot, they romp on really quickly as you will probably have seen by reading through this long thread.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Posts
Little update on my Cherry Laurels, I'll let the photos speak for themselves.
There's a few that aren't doing so well, will see what happens in the next few months.
😊
Joe
I 'think' it's been infected with aphids, but not 100%. I'm not a gardener, in fact miles away from being one. Will the bush recover? I have given it a trim, feed, and also sprayed down with a hose to try and remove any aphids. I can't see anything on the leaves, but I did cut a sprig off and put it in a sealed sandwich bag, and a few days later I see lots of little black specs appeared in the bag (too small to see what they are by naked eye). I'm worried it will spread to the other healthy ones nearby. Any help appreciated.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
The one on the left of the three bushes doesn't look very healthy either and the middle one is showing something similar. Is the tree an ornamental plum? That too is showing stress. Without any more information, I'd take a wild guess and say lack of water is the problem.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
The laurels were planted 14 months ago. The trees in between them are red robins and I'm certain are dead. They were planted badly by the nursery we bought them from (about 10 yrs ago). When the laurels were planted we dug massive holes to allow plenty of good soil and drainage. The laurels replaced some of the completely dead red robin trees.
The artificial grass has been down 10 years. The ground where I live is very clay/heavy soil.
I purchased some leaky pipe last week, so will get it hooked up this weekend and get it on a timer and see where we look in a months time. I'll report back. I have been watering them for the last few weeks, but the ground was very dry before that. To be honest we haven't had much rain this year where I live (Essex).
I know what I would do, but I don’t think you will like it, I would cut them down by at leat half, and water well, they soon make new growth once they’re well rooted.
If that fails, then buy new plants, bare roots in the winter at 3’ tall and immediately on planting, cut then down by a foot, they romp on really quickly as you will probably have seen by reading through this long thread.