Help with Conifer hedge

[Jeff0901]

Hi folks, this is my first post on your site after lurking about for several months. I wonder is anyone could be so kind as to offer any advice or opinion on the condition of my conifer hedge. I first noticed the browning about the middle of February this year and it has got steadily worse since. The hedge has been in for about 14 years and has always appeared healthy. As you can see from the images it is healthy above and below the browning. I stay in Central scotland.

thanks

Jeff

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[Brooklyn1]

check the other side, perhaps your neighbor doesn't like you.

[Kay Lancaster]

If I'd had to guess from those photos, and the plants were here in the US, I'd guess spruce spider mite. However, that's pretty much a SWAG. Best thing you can do is to take some cuttings in a sealed plastic bag to a local expert.

can get similar discolorations from several root rots, too.

[echinosum]

When did you last clip it? This can happen if you clip the hedge in cold weather. Though the browned fronds look regrown, not clipped, so I suspect that isn't it. Also they don't like cold winds, as you can appreciate if you see them being grown in particularly exposed places, where they often die off on the windward side. So if you had some particularly cold and windy weather, that could be the cause of it.

It doesn't regrow green unless there is still some green there. If you are lucky you can encourage the remaining green bits to grow into the brown area, otherwise you are stuffed, it won't look nice again. That is the difficulty of cypress hedges, they don't regrow if pruned hard. Choose a more reliable hedge to replace it with.

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[Farm1]

I can't get your pics to download for some readonb ut the snippets of then I can see made me think of the following....

Take yourself off to your local library and borrow the book "Beth Chatto's Gravel Garden" by Beth Chatto. If you're a keen gardener in Britain you probably know her name.

In that book (under 'Summer's Abundance') she has a large section on the problems she had with a Leylandii hedge and then with the same problem spreading to other conifers. She called in the Royal Hort Socy and was given a lot advice by a lot of people until finally a visitor diagnosed to problem correctly and they saved the hedge.

If nothing else, this segmetn of the book will give you a number of ideas on what it could possibly be as a number of diseases/bugs/fungi are mentioned. HTH.

[echinosum]

I've done a little more research and apparently in Britain this is most often caused by the Cypress aphid. Unfortunately the previous point I made about not regrowing from browned areas is true, so it isn't worth bothering trying to save the hedge it is excessively browned. Though you might want to look at the bits that are still green and consider whether you want to treat those with insecticide to try and save those.

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