Will my over fertilized boxwoods turn green again?

I planted 5 boxwoods in a row a couple of years ago and they've been doing wonderfully. This spring, my neighbors' 2 year old spilled a good amount of Miracle Grow slow release fertilizer between two of the plants. Those two have turned a bronze color while the other three look nice and green. My assumption is that the fertilizer has caused them to turn this color. Will they revert to their old green at some point or are they permanently damaged? Any advice would be appreciated! Thank you!

All you can do is water the devil out of the affected area where the damaged plants are and pray.
It is odd that the damage has not shown up earlier. Maybe slow release really means slow release. But massive watering will cause the pellets to break down and wash away the residue still there. Did you scrape up all you could of the fertilizer when this happened?

If they die, I would NOT put boxwoods back in there. The shade of green may be slightly different. It's best in mass plantings to use plants from the same lot. And the young ones would never really catch up with the older ones.

Thank you for your reply. The damage has been there for a couple of months but I'm just now joining this site and asking about it. I did sweep away what I could of the fertilizer, in fact, I thought I'd gotten most of it off so I was surprised to see the plants change color. The branches are green below the bark, though, all the way to the tips. They seem healthy other than the odd color. These are planted in a contained bed between a walkway and the house, so the water doesn't soak into other soil if I water them a lot. We did get a ton of rain at the beginning of the season, could that have affected two of the five? Sounds like I may be out of luck with these. Thanks!

I see what you mean about trying to leach the excess fertilizer out of the bed, if that in fact is the problem. The rains should have done it for you. Boxwood is tough and can withstand drought after established, but if the roots are wet for too long a period that can kill them. Roots need both oxygen AND water. But, why the two that were on either side of the fertilizer? If the bronze color is genetic, it would have shown up before two years were up. If I understand you, all 5 were uniform in color before the fertilizer spill. It's good to hear that the plants seem healthy otherwise; it was a good idea to check a branch to see if a cross-section looked normal. I wouldn't want to hear this comment myself, but all you can do is wait it out and see if the leaves return to their normal color after they change out. I don't know when that will be in Indiana. I would recommend you not fertilize them anytime soon. JUST KIDDING. Best of luck to you-

BTW, in the worst case scenario, if you have to replace them, I'd make sure the new shrubs can take a lot of water, since they are trapped between the house and walkway and drainage might be a problem. Also, boxwood usually need pruning, since they get pretty tall if left alone. You might want to decide what height you want, whether it's 3,4,5 feet, and research for shrubs of MATURE height that won't need pruning. I'm in Texas, so specific recommendations would be foolish.

Thanks so much for your reply!!

Do you know what type of box you have as there are several ones that grow to different heights, there are ones that wont really grow to more than about 3 feet and are used here as low hedging for around beds and walkways, but it still needs trimmed each year to make it strong and bushy. Box is sometimes susceptible to box fungus and this causes the foliage to turn brown, the fungus is caused by a sucking insect, however, as you say that too much plant food was spilled beside the plants, then I would think either the roots have been burned with the feed or splash from watering has got onto the foliage and burned this area. you said the shrubs are still alive when you checked to branches so there is still hope, maybe you could if possible dig them up, remove as much soil from the roots as you can and wash the whole plant in a large bucket of water, the roots too, then remove as much soil from the hole they were in and replace the soil with fresh and replant them again, dont feed these pants again this year as box dont really need a lot of feeding and you will encourage soft green growth that will not withstand the heat or cool evenings later on if you have that. if you want to feed them try use organic compost or animal manure around the root area but not onto the stems/branches unless it is household waist you have composted yourself. hope all works out for you and you can save these shrubs, if you have to replace them with the same box, then try choose ones that are about the same size and it wont look out of place. Good Luck. WeeNel.

Bronze leaves tell me you have winter damage. The ferilizing of the plants and you seeing the colr may just have been by accident. If a boxwood is way over fertilized the leaves will turn yellowish and die, there will be no bronze color .But, winter damaged leaves will do this..bronze and as spring and the weather change go green again. Also, the best time to fertilize boxwoods is in the fall because they won't push new top growth but root growth instead. I agree with everyone else on finding the right boxwood cultivar for the area you have. I like boxwwods inthere naturally state.

I'm writing with a new question about these same two boxwoods. It's now 8 months later and the boxwoods look nice and green, however, they didn't put out any new growth at all. Not one single leaf. There are three other boxwoods in the same row and those are flush with new growth. Does anyone know what the problem could be? They're not dead, they just haven't grown at all.

I wouldn't worry, they were under a lot of stress that they had to recover from, so they need to get over that before they'll put out new growth. I'm not surprised that they're a bit behind the shrubs that weren't over-fertilized, that's to be expected when a plant has some extra stress that it has to deal with. So I'd be patient with them--if they're looking healthy now that's definitely a good sign and hopefully they'll grow some for you this year.

Wonderful - thanks for the reply!