Boxwood blight strikes Colonial Williamsburg

Editor's note: Boxwood blight has troubled the nursery industry for years. In the latest Garden & Gun, Caroline Sanders wrote about the efforts of the Colonial Williamsburg landscape team and the Virginia Tech Boxwood Blight Task Force to handle the disease.

The scene was a dystopian paradox. In early August, against the backdrop of the Georgian brick architecture and cobblestoned streets of Colonial Williamsburg, a team of landscapers in Tyvek suits stood inside the garden of the Ludwell-Paradise house, ripping up hundred-year-old boxwoods and heaving them into a woodchipper before burning the remaining ground cover. That’s the protocol for combating boxwood blight, a highly contagious fungal disease that infects the leaves and shoots of boxwoods, turning the plant black before stripping it of its leaves and killing it. 

Read the full article in Garden & Gun magazine.