----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kitty Morrissy" <1*@rewrite.hort.net>
> To: p*@hort.net
> Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2019 6:09:23 AM
> Subject: RE: More plants!
>
> Re  driveway where everything has coincidentally died.
> Salt run off?

It's a raised bed and he says he doesn't believe in salt. It's very mysterious.

He doesn't like me having plants there and hacked back the Daphne and Hypericum that were sticking past the property line by about six inches.  They're elderly (he's 92) and he used to teach horticulture at the University of Illinois.  In fact, he was my old advisor's advisor.

The Daphne and Hypericum all had really bad split branches; the ends that he hacked off removed support, so the branches bowed lower and split at the base.  I also believe they stomped on them a lot as they got in and out of their car.  (The plants were totally dead this spring, so I yanked them).

But it doesn't explain the Hosta that suddenly receded, the hellebores that wilted suddenly this spring and are now gone, the other perennials that died, the Hydrangea that died, or the Weigela that has been there for 80 years (according to the landscape plan of the house) that suddenly lost 2/3 of its branches.  He asked me to tear out the Weigela and I refused, pointing out that it was on that master landscape plan and was planted before his house was even built.  Sad that it's suddenly in decline too.  What's even stranger is that no weeds grow in those places either.  Or that I created that bed twelve years ago and it grew like crazy until he moved in.  Coincidences abound.

Chris

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