Dogwood trees keep dying

I help out a a local school and they have a strange problem, the "baby" Dogwood trees keep dying... they don't last past 2 years and are stunted. I'm wondering if it's the extremely poor drainage of the area, it's wet to the point of mushy most of the winter or perhaps the mulch they put around the base.... could it be caused by too much mulch? I lifted the dead one last week, no digging required... the mulch had cleared from around it like a hole at a golf course and it was the golf flag, it just lifted right out of the hole. No roots! It didn't look rotted, just clean of any roots like a stick that had been placed in a hole... Ideas? The sweet older lady who keeps planting them is determined to put another in, but I'd really like to get to the bottom of this!

Yes Dogwoods like well drained soil..try planting with some compost and cottonseed meal. They also don't like full sun. (the natives anyway). Are they being transplanted from somewhere or are they balled and burlap or in pots? If transplanted that may be the reason.

Potted, I thought it maybe the moisture... I tried to convince her to put in Weeping Willow but she'd determined they have to be Dogwood since they are memorial to her husband... but she don't want to put the work in that putting a uncompatable tree in that area would require and I have bigger projects to tackle. I'll down load some photos of different Weeping Willows to try to change her mind... what other tree likes to be wet most of the year, it never really gets very dry there.

http://www.plantideas.com/tree/indexlist6.html

http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles1201/trees_wet_soil.asp

Here are 2 lists. May I suggest you contact your local U. C. Extension Agent for a list of trees for your area? They have volumes of helpful info.
Good luck!

K

Flowering dogwood needs good drainage, shallow planting, a thin layer of mulch (not piled against the trunk), and a sunny, breezy exposure (because of a fatal fungus disease that attacks it in its prefered shady settings).

Don't amend the backfill soil in the planting hole. Instead, you might try amending the entire planting bed, or spreading a few cubic yards of suitable soil on top of the existing grade and planting in that low mound. (Basically you would be setting the tree on top of the existing soil and filling around it with better soil.)

Also, if you use container-grown trees, do not plant them in your heavy soil with the potting mix still intact. Remove the pots and douse the rootballs in a big washtub to make the potting mix fall away from the roots, and then spread the roots and plant them as you would bare-root trees.

Guy S.

thanks!

I was going to start a new thread, but since we're talking about dogwoods... I'm wondering if this is true.

I bought my house almost two years ago. It has a huge old dogwood in the front yard, which is looking a little gangly. I'm told it was planted when the house was built, which was in 1942. I was also told that dogwoods have a life span of about 50-60 years, so it should be no surprise to anyone that my tree is on its last legs, so to speak. It did bloom this year, but wasn't totally smothered in blooms like the other dogwoods in the neighborhood. I had to really look for healthy branches with blooms on it. It was one of the last trees in the area to put out blooms, and then to leaf out. There are clearly some dead big branches in there...

I can post pictures, if anyone thinks they can diagnose it that way. I think it is dying, but due to old age. It's definitely in a sunny breezy spot (dominates the front yard where there's only a red Jap. maple about 20 feet away and little else to compete with).

So, true or false: Dogwoods have a lifespan and mine is at or near the end of it?

I do not know about lifespan, but here in Ct. they can live quite a long time. There is talk here of a dogwood disease that is spreading throughout the country. Try this website-


http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/treeshrub/dogwood.htm

Some likely things to have your consulting arborist check out:

dogwood anthracnose
borers
root-disturbance problems
drainage problems

Guy S.