Box Moth Caterpillar

Over the 10 years that Beautiful Borders has been trading, we have seen an increase in the prevalence of Box Moth Caterpillar, in Northamptonshire. Over the last couple of years we have had cases in Brixworth, Maidwell, Overstone, Little Brington and Kingsthorpe. It's always hard to know if the caterpillars have arrived in plants (a couple of our customers had recently purchased new plants), or whether the spread has occurred naturally.

I would advise customers to regularly check their Buxus plants throughout the season, because often the caterpillars have already caused extensive damage before being spotted. Their lifecycle can be repeated 3-4 times in a season, so you can imagine how much damage can occur!

The key things to look out for are leaves that appear to have been shredded, leaves that appear to be stuck together with webs (hiding the chrysalis), caterpillar faeces and the caterpillars themselves.

Treatment/eradication of these little fellas is not easy and relies on dedication from the plant owner! In my experience the pheromone traps serve little purpose (I have never seen a moth captured, despite using them on several occasions, in several different gardens!). I also would not promote solely the use of pesticides, because each individual caterpillar needs to be sprayed. The best method is to remove them by hand and destroy them. It is a very slow task and needs to be repeated regularly from May to November.

As a company we now avoid planting Buxus, favouring Yew, Ilex crenata and different varieties of Pittosporum.