What Is the Matter With My Boxwood?

What Is the Matter With My Boxwood?

“What is the matter with my Boxwood?” Lesley and I have been asked this question much too often in the last few years. Boxwood (Buxus sempervrens, microphylla, etc.) have many troubles, for example: Leaf Minors, Leaf Curlers, Spider Mites, Psyllid, Volutella and Phytophora fungal blights, Nematodes, too much water on overhead sprinklers, or too little water, winter damage, frozen soils, heavy soils, Boxwood Decline and most recently, Boxwood Blight. None of these by themselves are the cause of most of the Boxwood dieback. We can go through all kinds of soil and tissue samples, fertilizers, fungicide and insecticide sprays and still be missing the main cause.

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Tree Diversity and Human Health

Tree Diversity and Human Health

Mother Nature’s Moment - January 2021
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

A decade ago when we were first visiting our daughter’s-in-law family home in the mountains of Austria we had the privilege of witnessing life on a European farm first hand. While there we watched her young cousins on the mountain alm1 playing, half naked in the pond where the pigs were bathing too. It was one of the first of many real life lessons, since, on the value of biodiversity, and the role of microbes in developing our human immune systems.

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