Battling Boxwood Blight

It is an Asian evergreen beloved worldwide but especially in stately English and American gardens, where it is often sculpted into the angular borders that give it its name.

We’re talking about boxwood (Buxus sempervirens), which since the 1990s in England and the 2010s in the United States has been ravaged by a fungus that shows no signs of letting up.

The blight, which spreads by sticky spores that peel off into the atmosphere, can also infect such boxwood relatives as sweet box and pachysandra.

As with the human struggle against Covid, the plant world’s fight against the boxwood blight has been all over the place and marked by fits and starts. It is currently incurable but it is treatable.However, fungicides are expensive, require repeated application and may harm the environment.

So what can you do to prevent or minimize it? First, check your irrigation and drainage systems as water seems to be the prime culprit in spreading the fungus, which thrives in moderate temperatures as well as moisture.

Check your clothes and pets as humans and animals do their part in carrying the spores. 

Also clean your garden equipment and have your landscapers clean theirs. Watch your use of high-powered blowers, which not only increase noise pollution but can spread the spores. (We at the Morano Group have gone to an all-green fleet of electric blowers and mowers.)

You can, of course, also go to a blight-resistant type of boxwood. But just because a type of boxwood is blight-resistant itself doesn’t mean it can’t spread the fungus.

As with any disease, forewarned is forearmed.