Any Gardners on here who can help?

[lcolin]

The plant is a cordyline. The last winter did for loads of these (i lost about 80% of the ones in my gardens (i run a garden maintenance company in herts . The best thing to do is prepare a good size hole roughly twice the size of the root ball (this will allow the roots to re-establish more quickly), dig in a a bag or so of compost (whatever you have will do (multi purpose compost is fine)) and plant, making sure all roots are covered but prefferablly not the base of the green shoots as this may make them rot (i notice in the picture that there are quite a few roots above the new shoots - you could remove these roots with a sharp knife or pair of secateurs - but try to leave a clean cut). Using a sharp saw cut of any dead trunk above the shoots as this will not re-grow. Leave a couple of inches of cleanly cut stump above the highest shoot.

These plants wouldn't normally need protecting over winter, but after last winter i think it would be worth covering it with some fleece blanket (should be available from your local garden centre) this coming winter.

Good luck - hope it comes back well.

[lcolin]

cheers dude!

[lcowner]

this is great! ive got some laurel hegdging growing,but when i say growing well its grown feck all the last few years and last years cold spell nearly killed it along with me .its in the ground 4 years and its only grown 3ft high (on the best 1 ) and 1ft on worst .i thought they wer all deal from the freezing but i se new shoots coming up from the base of them(not unlike bucthers only different!)
how do i give them some pep in their step ...im strongly thinking of digging them out if they dont grow soon but i hav a 1/2 acre garden ad have spent a lot of money n them .there a bit like an lc but with leaves on them ;Dthe place wer i bought them said' youl have a lovely hedge in 2 years' .there in shale ground like

[lcowner]

maybe i need to get out more often me thinks ;D

[lcolin]

If your laurels went bad over winter, or soon after the winter, it is most likely waterlogging of the roots. Is the area very wet in the winter - squelchy underfoot? Laurels don't like to have wet roots all the time. Was there lots of yellow leaves before they went bad? The bad news is that if this is the case then theres not a great deal you can do about it, other than dig 'em all up, and spend time inproving the ground before you put them back in (probably not the answer you wanted to hear). As a 'quickfix' you could try popping to your local garden centre and getting some pelleted chicken manure (normally comes in 8kg buckets) and spreading this evenly around the base of the plants. It might help a little, but don't expect it to make a huge difference.

Good luck.

[lcowner]

mmmmmmmmmmm thats not good then tryed the chicken manure the proper stuff as my brother in law owns 60,000 battery chickens!yep after the freeze the leaves went yellow then brwn the i got sick looking at them and pulled all the leaves of and trimmed(more like bucthered them ha) all back there was about 5-6 pf them where totally dead and the rest have new shoots coming from the bas of them....yep the ground is very wet particulary ne one side and is sqeeggy under foot.if all fails what make n model of hedge likes wet ground??

[lcolin]

Willow would be a good bet for wet ground, fairly quick growing too, but downside is that it doesn't make a very dense hedge. You might get away with privet. Whatever you go with it would be worth spending a fair bit of time preparing and improving the ground before you plant. Dig down much further than you need to, add in plenty of manure (bagged or bought - but not to much of the fresh chicken manure as this can be a little too strong sometimes and may do more harm than good, cow or horse manure would be prefferable), and also mix in plenty of gravel to aid drainage. If there is a slope away from the hedge it would also be worth digging in a few trench's drain to direct water away from the area. Sounds like a lot of work i know - but so is replacing the hedge every few years!!

On the plus side though, if the existing plants have new growth at the base, they may come back ok. Last winter was unusually harsh (i'm sure you noticed) and did more damage than any other i've known. So it is possible that this may not happen again this winter.