Contact

Email hello@boxcaterpillardisease.co.uk. I read everything, and I answer most things within a few days.

Asking me to identify something

Send a photograph taken inside the plant — branches parted, showing the interior — rather than one of the outside. Almost every identification email I get is a picture of a brown hedge from three metres away, and a brown hedge looks the same whether the cause is caterpillar, blight, drought or root damage.

What tells them apart is webbing and frass, and both are inside. If you can, also photograph the ground or paving directly beneath the plant.

Corrections

Please do send them. Product listings change without warning — the previous version of this site spent months linking to a XenTari listing that had been delisted. If a link takes you somewhere unexpected, or a dose rate does not match the pack in your hand, I would rather hear it from you than find out a season later.

What I cannot help with

I am a gardener writing about one pest, not a business. I do not do site visits, I do not treat other people's hedges, and I cannot recommend a contractor in your area. For a plant health problem you cannot identify from the guides here, the RHS advisory service is the right next step.

Press and links

Happy to answer questions from anyone writing about box tree caterpillar, and happy for the garden photographs on this site to be used with credit and a link — ask first, and note the caterpillar close-up is not mine to license.