# Can these be saved?



## Redtenchu (Jan 28, 2017)

My elderly Niehbor has a couple bushes that have started to brown on her. She cut away the brown areas on one of them, (not sure how long ago).

What can be done with them? She doesn't have the $$ for replacements, so we need to know if they will recover soon or if we will need to remove them?


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## Mightyquinn (Jan 31, 2017)

We had some bushes that had something similar like that around the perimeter of our housing edition and they said it was some kind of fungus and removed them all and replaced them with a different kind of shrubbery. I would say to cut out the affected areas as best you can and give them a good shot of fertilizer and hopefully they will grow back in a few years. I am by no means a botanist so all I am giving you is an educated guess.


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## Jason Jay (Aug 18, 2017)

Those look like evergreen bushes of some kind like pine cone bushes. We live near Chicago and during the summer we've had a few evergreen bushes brown like yours on the side nearest the hot brick wall. We replaced them and the problem happened again. That's how we surmised that it was too close to the south facing and west facing sun light. If those evergreens are in full sun all day long in the summer and the brick absorbs all that hot sun energy and it radiates out and burns your bushes. Ours never got better because the problem is the location being too close to the hot brick wall. If you cut out the brown parts it might look bad because it's not a full and normal looking bush anymore because chunks are missing that will most likely never grow back with new branches as ours never grew back once we cut out dead spots. I have the same color brick on my house too. I never tried fertilizers to revive them after we cut out the dead spots but I doubt that would work.

To be frank, those pics you uploaded show that if your neighbor removed them then the overall landscape design and view would look better because it looks overcrowded right now anyway. That one bush is right next to a hose real and you need elbow room and working room (like 2 feet on both sides)for the hose so when you are reeling in the hose that your arms are not rubbing up against sharp and annoying pine needles. Those hose reels love to wobble and slide back and forth if they aren't firmly planted into the ground where it's located as well. The other bush near a window and gutter downspout is also contributing to an overgrown and crowded landscape look. It would probably look better without them anyway. Overcrowded is worse than a blank slate. Then she can plant perennial flowers there if she wanted to like 1 or 2 day lilies ($5 to $10 each), Black eyed susans ($15 for 1 gallon size), knockout rose bushes ($20 to $30 for 1 gal size), or a clemitis vine flower with a trellis leaning against the brick wall. That's what I would do.


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