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Help! Harsh british summer / winter's ravaged my garden!

Hello!

 

We were lucky enough to be on series 7 of Garden Rescue and had our garden redesigned by the lovely Garden Ninja Lee Burkhill.

 

Overall the garden's been lovely - we've had meals out in the garden which we never could have done before!

 

I put the all of the plants into the RHS "My Garden" and have been doing the tasks it recommends as they appear. But, despite my best efforts, this newbie gardener appears to be killing some of the plants! I think the harsh cold winter following the scorching heatwave we had last year may have something to do with it...

Anyway long story short, the top half of our Pittosporum tenuifolium looks dead. How do I deal with this? Should I just leave it and hope it recovers, or do I need to prune the entire dead top half? Or is the plant dead, and I should dig it out and replace it?

 

Please help!

Uploaded files:
  • pittosporum.jpg

Hi @dexterlakin

Great to hear from you! It was a pleasure to design your garden for you on Garden Rescue.

Right firstly, don't panic! A lot of people lost Pittosporum this year after the awful winter we had. The best thing to do is to prune it back to the fresh growth. To give it a fighting chance of recovering. If you leave those frost-damaged ends, the chances of them regrowing are low. But don't dig it up. It should recover.

Give it a good mulch or liquid feed to help it on its way!

All the best

Lee

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