Question
I have a potted boxwood topiary that is approximately 2 years old.  It has been doing very well until the last week.  I was on vacation and had someone watering my plants and I think she may have watered it too much.  Typically I do not add additional water and just let the rain take care of it, but it is now yellow and seems brittle.  Do you think it is suffering from too much water and if so what should I do to repair it?

Answer
Hello Amy

This does sound like a case of over-watering!  If the water can't drain away fast enough, the roots will be standing in water and may begin to rot off.

My immediate advice would be to move the pot under cover for a while, (so that it is out of the rain), raise the pot up on 3 or 4 plant pot supports to allow the water to drain and wait a week or two.  

That might be enough, but if your plant doesn't perk up it could be that all the nutrients have been washed out of the compost, so it may be better to repot the boxwood into fresh compost once things have dried out a little.  

Take as much of the old compost as you can from the roots, place a layer of fresh compost in the bottom of the pot.  Place the plant back into the pot and begin to add compost, giving the plant a shake every now and then to work the compost between the roots (you will have to be very firm about this!)  Once the pot is full, firm the compost down, give it a good watering and leave it on the plant pot supports to drain out any excess water.

Hopefully the roots are not too far gone and the plant will recover - I do hope so.

Gill