Loading…
29
Rant: My neighbor's crepe myrtle looked dead for 3 years and now it's a monster
So my neighbor has this crepe myrtle in his front yard and for about 3 years it looked like a total loss. Sparse leaves, no blooms, just these sad gray stems. He was ready to cut it down last spring but I told him to hold off. He stopped mowing around the base and pulled the mulch back about 6 inches from the trunk, that was it. This July that thing exploded with pink flowers and put on probably 18 inches of new growth. The difference is night and day. Has anyone else seen a tree come back like that just from fixing the root flare?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
jennysullivan12d ago
Pulling the mulch back and stopping the mower actually fixes the root flare, but that alone usually isn't what brings a crepe myrtle back from the dead. More often the tree was just never established right in the first place, and giving those surface roots room to breathe let it finally settle in. Three years of looking sad is pretty normal for a crepe myrtle that got planted too deep.
7