The land grant universities also sponsor the county extension service offices. Taking in samples of your distressed/dying plants for an accurate diagnosis could go a long way in directing your plant choices and perhaps easing your soil issues. btw, Hosta Virus X does not kill plants although it does disfigure them and can be easily transmitted to other unaffected hosta by mechanical means. Both the blight and the nematodes are treatable but it may very well be something else entirely that is causing the issue. Confirming exactly what the problem is will simplify what course of action you may choose to take.

Volutella blight is the most common disease of pachysandra. Check out this fact sheet from Missouri Botanical Garden: http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/gardens-gardening/your-garden/help-for-the-home-gardener/advice-tips-resources/pests-and-problems/diseases/fungal-spots/volutella-blight.aspx Euonymus scale will also attach pachysandra, so look closely under the leaves and on the stems for this pest. Before planting anything else in that location, be sure you ID the problem and avoid planting anything else that would be susceptible to the same disease/pest.

Hi everyone. So we have a huge maple tree in our front yard that covers a good portion of ground area. Underneath it is a large patch of ground cover. Mainly it's pachysandra but there is a patch of myrtle growing underneath a small area of it also. My dog keeps peeing in there and has been for the past few years. We've noticed season after season, the once healthy pachysandra looks worse each year. It happened slowly and now is obviously just an eyesore. We're thinking of removing it altogether but I'm afraid it will be even uglier with a big patch of ground underneath the tree. Our yard is fairly dark as it is and my guess is that getting something else to grow underneath this tree probably will be a challenge. Aside from re-training our dog to go elsewhere in the yard...is there anything we can do to get this stuff back? Can I mix in some manure or transplant more pachysandra? Thank you in advance.

I am in the NE and have a mess of pachysandra and hosta all mixed up. Once the pachysandra mixes, if you try to pull it out, the roots seem to pull up the hosta. Our mix is in a large area with a sprinkler system so water is not an issue (although I can't tell you what types of hosta we have). The watered hosta definitely does better than those outside the sprinkler area. Where both pachysandra and hosta are evenly mixed, if the hosta is disturbed, the pachysandra seems to "win" after that. We had a patch that was inadvertently dug up to plant daffodils and the hosta in that spot never made it back very well (was a large patch about three feet across). Ours have been mixing for at least five years,