Last year (end of summer) I pruned or maybe I should say hacked up one of the rhododendron's I have in my yard. The plant was very big (probably 10' tall) and was touching the house and needed to be trimmed.I went ahead and trimmed it back to about 6' tall and took some width off as well. After trimming I was a little worried as I was unsure how it would do having so much cut off and being such a novice was unsure how I did. A few weeks later I was pleased to see new growth at or close to all of the areas I cut. However soon after this the winter cold weather arrived and although it did have new growth it seemed to halt in the growth process through the winter months. About a month ago I noticed some of the growth started to turn brown, and the leaves started to curl up. I am wondering if the plant is slowly dieing from the cutting or if it may have some time of fungus/parasite or something. Please help :)
I imagine it will recover and be fine. The best time to prune rhodos is right after the bloom, so they have time to grow before winter cold comes. Winter was tough this year and the new growth probably was not mature enough to handle it. http://www.rhododendron.org/v47n2p79.htm
Eric thanks for the reply. So after seeing the pics above you do think it was probably caused from new growth and cold weather? Becasue currently it does not seem to be doing anything, as you can see it does have some green growth and then there is the brown :( but over the last couple of weeks I have not noticed any changes that are visible. If this was from the pruning last year at what point do you think it may turn around ?
I don't really know, but the green branches look very healthy and the dead branches look very dead, so it does not seem like it's not caused by a pathogen, because the green leaves would be unhealthy looking. As the link points out, rhodos don't actually grow that much each year, so it may take a bit of time before they appear full again.
