What is wrong with my spotted laurel?

My feeling is that it's outgrown its pot - they are fairly vigorous growers. Have you tried feeding it?

Hi Sid, thank you for your reply. I had wondered if outgrowing its pot was the problem - that's the only difference between my two laurels; the healthy one is in a much bigger pot even though the plants are roughly the same size. It's been fed the same as the other one but the difference between them is quite marked. Do you think it has a good chance of recovery if I repot it?

Sid's right, needs a bigger pot, poor thing, and yes it should recover well, though you might have to cut it back a bit if all those browny coloured leaves drop off.

Thank you both ... off to the garden centre tomorrow for a bigger pot! Or maybe, given not much cash, Poundstretcher!

They are very vigorous, Jan and I agree with the others. Pot size.

Mine is in the ground, and it's crazing me with its growth.

Thanks for confirming Llew - I've just bought a nice new pot from Instore this morning and hopefully if it doesn't rain, hubby is going to help me repot it over the weekend. I planted a new spotted laurel in one of my borders about 6 weeks ago, and I would say it's doubled in size already.

You're welcome Jan (I buy stuff from Poundstretcher for the garden all the time lol) Don't be afraid to prune it a bit to tidy up - my mother hacked one in her garden and it's come back lovely now.

It's lost so many leaves that if I prune it, it'll just be a load of stalks! Will this still be okay? Or should I just leave well alone?

I don't like being asked questions like this! If it were mine, I'd prune it back as I would EXPECT it to reshoot again after a hard prune. BUT, if it dies, then I'm responsible! It might be worth posting it as another question on here as someone might have more experience of pruning them than me. My mum's regrew lovely, but that was in spring - it might react differently now. If it's any consolation, they are pretty easy from cuttings, so if you lose this one, you could always propagate from the other one. A light prune would be fine....I'm just worried about pruning it too hard at this time of year. Someone else might know.

Oh Sid, I'd never hold anyone else responsible! I think it's probably worth the risk as I think I'm losing it anyway. Wish me luck!

Update - I've now repotted it, given it a good watering and a feed, and have compromised by simply removing all the poorly looking leaves, as when I inspected it more closely there is, in fact, some new growth on the tips. I'll leave it a while and see what happens. Thanks for the advice!

No probs - good luck with it! :-)

Good luck with it, Jan. I'm sure it will be fine. Fingers crossed. :o)

That's really good, I'm sure it will be fine. It is best in Spring to prune it so that next spring it will bloom and be beautiful. Start to watch out for the next laurel as that might have same problem. I only got my laurel last year when it was tiny! Now it's overcrowding the pot, literally. It look really nice now though and doesn't seen to have any problem.

Sadly even after almost a year in a bigger pot it's still not doing well and looks really poorly. I think it might just be time to let it go.