Yard Update...Dying Arborvitaes and Their Sad Journey to the Trash...Oct 2020

Out of the 5 dead or dying arborvitaes, two are no more. One has been moved to a corner of the yard near the juniper, adjacent to another arborvitae. I trimmed the dead spots off of the newly moved one and turned it so it looks pretty good :). 

The removal of one partially living and two dead arborvitaes happened this week after the arborist confirmed the situation was dire. 

We had six weeks of no rain and temperatures in the high 90's and even over 100 degrees this summer. Followed by lots of rain and probably too much watering prior to the rain, there was just too much water. 

Root rot seems to be the general thought and by the smell of the soil and the small size of the root balls, I tend to concur.

Our clay soil is red when healthy and exchanging oxygen. I've amended our soil a lot where these guys were planted, but there is still a high clay content and nothing was reddish down under that hole.

The Replanting Project

This arborvitae on the left starts the long row that we had. To it's right is now a small Rose of Sharon and then a new, heavily discounted, Burkwood Viburnum. We have two of those by our driveway and everyone likes the small white blooms that look like little snowballs. It is very fragrant and grows nice and tall here. 

These two dying arborvitaes to the right of the new Viburnum: the plan is to cut off the 3 stems that are dead (presumably due to the roots feeding them being dead), move the one on the left forward and to the right. Then I'll rotate the one on the right so that together they make one decent looking arborvitae.

This is where one of the dead ones was.

There was hosta here, but in order to hopefully help this soil not be so saturated, I've put this Rose of Sharon in for the time being. It grows freely in my yard and I'm not in the mood to waste more money right now.

This corner now has a new half dead arborvitae in it, but it looks pretty good.

We hope to get another Camilla at some point like this one, but no one has anything decent right now.

A newly planted maple tree that has been nurtured in the bunny area for several years. We're so excited to give this one a try!

Finally, this is where we moved the one struggling arborvitae to. It looks better in person!