Ligustrum Health

Hello all,

I hope you all are doing well. My fiancé and I recently bought a house in Tampa, Florida which we have been in for 8 months. We are chipping away at projects around the house and are moving on to landscaping. The current landscaping of the yard includes a mature ligustrum hedge. We both like the hedge; however, I am trying to figure out what we should do with it. Right now the ligustrum is very "leggie." As you can see in the pictures the canopy is very thick where as the base has little to no leaves. I have tried to keep the canopy trimmed in order to spark growth from beneath the canopy but have been unsuccessful. Furthermore, after doing a little research I am beginning to think that there is some leaf spot along with another disease that I haven't been able to identify just yet. In the pictures you will see that the leaves do have the classic presentation of leaf spot but also the trunks and branches of the plant seem to be hollowing out. The ultimate question is should we try and save the plants or should we start over. Looking forward to your responses and if there is any other information I can give you I would be happy to.

 

Does this get full sun ? Too much shade will make this leggy. Is the purpose to cover the wood fence....and if something new...would you like it to grow above the fence line for privacy ? As a last resort you could cut to the ground and see if it grows back. Over watering or fertilizer burn...might show up as leaf spots.

 

It probably does not get full sun as it is on the north side of the house. The flippers that renovated the house put the privacy fence in. There use to be a chain linked fence so it probably got more sunlight than it does now. We have not done anything like fertilized or watered it. If we cut them to ground would rather start over I think. We don't want it above the fence we just like that it hides the fence. I think we would start over with a viburnum or something. We are totally open to suggestions

 

How about replanting with clumping (not running) bamboo. Grows 2 feet a year. Buy 5 gallon plants and fence will be covered promptly. Be sure the boo is 100% bamboo mite free. I like Photinia, it grows FAST with water and fertilizer....but needs close to full sun.

 

YaddaYadda, thank you for the suggestion. I'm not sure how we feel about the bamboo idea. We were kind of thinking about something along the same line as a ligustrum. So maybe a viburnum. Thoughts?

 

Viburnum it is, then. Go to a nearby nursery and get an evergreen that likes part shade. Some drop fruit on the ground. There are many varieties and nursery can help more than I.

 

I have a ligustrum hedge that's at least 30 years old around my property that looked 10 times worse that yours. We did a major relandscape a little over 2 years ago and ended up "renovating" the hedge. It would have cost us a fortune to dig it out and plant something new. Cut it down to bare wood around the entire perimeter of a corner lot. installed a drip around it. It started filling in pretty fast and within a year was it looked great. It was hard to look at before that and also right after the renovation but we're really happy with it now. If we had done it over, Viburnum for sure!