Hi all,
I'm in Phoenix and been noticing this bush dying off and going brown part by part for the last few weeks. Not sure if the pictures are showing it probably.
Last week I changed my irrigation from going off at 6 am for 20 minutes to 7:30 pm for 25 minutes a day. I'm hoping this will give it all night to absorb the water vs the summer heat drying out the soil after it runs in the morning.
As you can see in the pics, I have one drip line going into the bush and there's like a little sprinkler head on thing that feeds that drip line that also goes off a little outside the bush for additional water. I don't know if it's sick or too little/too much but all my others plants seem ok and this is similiar to how much I watered it last summer.
I don't know what this plant is, it was here when I moved in so any help would be appreciated.
by Desperate_Concern977
48 Comments
Kinda looks like the result of hard pruning and high temps.
It could be from the heat , the rocks make the soil hotter
Get rid of the stones and mulch the surrounding area
It’s mostly an urban myth and there have been a few studies recently disproving it. But common sense says if every time it rained and then the sun came out most plants would burn we’d see a lot more signs of issues in nature. Anyway drip irrigation doesn’t touch the leaves and given you are in Phoenix is the way to go.
Old age
It’s not dying off. This is just an aging woody shrub where all new growth is on those parts exposed to sun and light. When and if it is trimmed you expose the “branchy” interior. It will grow back.
But, honestly, this plant is past its prime. Time to bring in some new stock.
There is a lot of stupid theories here, water droplets, get the fuck out. Most likely candidate is Spider Mites, they love the heat and they love needle leaf evergreens. You can take a piece of white paper and see if you can knock some off the leaves onto the paper to id them. Numerous different treatments for mites
It can also be drought
Looks like a box shrub. Could be box blight.
Those rocks are absolutely cooking that thing with radiant heat is my guess.
Ever throw a little water its way?
Do you know if this is boxwood? My plant app has given me two different plants from the angles. One is boxwood and the other says Myrtle. Also says it’s healthy which it’s not. It resembles boxwood that I have. Is there any webbing like fine spider webs inside the shrub? , and sign of small caterpillars or moths?
Without seeing it, my guess is boxwood and boxwood moth has gotten to it. This infestation has been recognized in Southern US and into lower regions of Canada where I am. You can try to spray with BTK (don’t know US version but check at garden centre) but the infestation will return until it is fully dead and it looks like it is heading that way.
Or it could be extreme heat and you are watering the shrub and should be watering at the ground level for roots.
It’s been trimmed in the heat… U have to water the piss out of it when u trim them in the hot ass heat!
Well, it might not apply to you, being in AZ, but here in the sultry Southeast that appearance could be attributed to fungus
Might not be why, but it looks like it’s been trimmed with a gas or electric hedge trimmer for a long long time. That kind of pruning over time will make it produce dense leaves only on the very outside, causing the inside to go hollow. Eventually it will just die off.
If it were me, I’d make several deeper individual cuts with pruners to poke holes in the leaf cover. Getting some sun in there encourages new interior leaf growth. Reach into the plant from the outside and take a whole branch so you get a hole, repeat from all over the plant until it looks uniform.
If it looks funky, give it like a week or two and you won’t be able to tell. I have a very picky client where I alternate between hedge trimming and poking holes every two weeks (hedge trim, two weeks later poke holes, etc) and it’s working really well. I’m seeing new growth in spots that hadn’t done much in years and my client doesn’t know I’m doing anything different.
Even if what’s happening isn’t due to the hedge trimming, more leaves to pull sunlight from and fewer woody branches to send energy to will up the chances of it bouncing back.
PS. You don’t have to entirely ditch the power trimmer for a healthier hedge. Going forward, just poke some holes every once in a while to keep it from going hollow again and you can still keep the sculpted look. Bonus points: leaves on the inside gives you the option to shrink it down or change the shape later on.
There is a boxwood blight. Look it up.
Weed killer?
Are you in AZ?
Dog pee?
Probably heat and needs water
Gophers.
That desert heat is effing brutal.
Have you seen any type of pests on it? Sometimes insect infestation can cause this.
You live in Phoenix, is the problem…
I had a boxwood that had been there for at least 20 years just up and die in the heat+dry spell we got last year. You need to water it or just kill it and plant a prickly pear cactus(what I would do)
I’d guess based on the change you made that the water is draining / the plant is using it over night, but then phoenix summer hits the next day and there’s nothing left for the plant to cool itself with. In general, it’s always better to water in the early morning than in the evening because it prevents fungal issues, though I’m guessing those issues aren’t that common in phoenix.
“I cut my shrub’s new growth twice a year in the desert heat and don’t understand why it is dying!”
Man, it’s a hot one.
Because he doesn’t like being a cube.
I do landscaping and I’m not gonna act like I’m an expert or know everything because I just do what I’m told to do. But I’ve seen this happen to people’s bushes all the time and it’s never from doing anything different, because the home owners don’t do anything to their bushes. I think it’s from heat and trimming it and whenever I’ve seen it, it’s always better the next year. Sometimes people ask us to cut the dead out of it, and then the next year it’s grown a lot and fully filled in. So my suggestion would be to either just leave it, or cut the dead parts out if you don’t care what it looks like this year, because it will look even better next year.
I will say that sometimes when people’s shit starts dying it’s because of some kind of bug or fungus, so look for signs of that and you can get whatever you need to treat it. But when I’ve seen it, it’s rarely ever been because of that.
Years of improper maintenance. There needs to be some seasonal growth within and this plant has not been trimmed, it’s been sheared. Basically too much old growth inside.
You’re in Phoenix. Enough said. The rocks are cooking the roots.
I live down in Tucson and do irrigation and this probably isn’t the issue but we start watering around 5am. That way it gets water before the hot day rather than having water at night when it’s cooler with no sun.
I was scrolling and thought this was a chocolate muffin for a second 😂
Looks a little like Box Blight to me.
Needs water
The hedge is not allowed to grow out and bushy, which gives it strength.
Look around your house for a 5G cell tower
Dog pee probably. It’s next to the side walk. Dozens of dogs probably walk by there every day, and each one takes a leak there to let the other dogs know that they received the message that that they were there. They all use the same plants as a “check in list.”
“Bruno wuz here.” “Coco wuz here too!” “Max wuz here lol” “Gunner wuz here!” “Luna’s here too!”
It’s a camouflage bush obviously
We had similar bushes doing the same thing and one day some old dude – I’m almost 60 and this was 20 years ago – gave me a handwritten instruction page of how to fix them. He said it gets a parasitic worm that slowly kills it. The cure involved baking soda and a special kind of vinegar. We sold and left, never addressed it but maybe a google search on the type of bush and diseases or a google photo search might give an answer.
Boxwood blight.
Probably the same reason my dog died off.
She bit too many people.
It could be the Box Wood Moth. Those little jerks killed all my boxwood bushes this year. They’re a massive problem in my area of the country not sure if they’re a problem there too.
https://bygl.osu.edu/node/2188
Spider mites.
An English boxwoods in Phoenix, surrounded by gravel, by a brick wall, by a street, and aggressively pruned with hedge trimmers in July. It’s a miracle it lived as long as it did.
Mites and bugs
I peed in it too many times, sorry
It could be the rocks are cooking it or a disease is killing it. Either way, it’s dead.