Hi A Neighbor's wooden shed caught on fire and burned down. Our 6' Cedar hedging about 6 feet away has now turned brown on one side. Our (five feet tall to 15 feet)rododendrums have many leaves that have turned to mostly brown. The neighbor's 20' Holly tree is about 75% burnt with few green leaves. His insurance company has told him that the Holly tree will survive. They will try to get an opinion from a plant specialist whether our 17 cedar trees and 5 rodo's will survive. Does anyone have any experience with a similar situation? How long would it take? The Cedar trees were put in a year ago.
It'll take as long as it normally would for new buds to form and open. I would scratch the bark on the burnt branches to see if they're alive at all. If they're not, you might as well cut them back, but if they are, then you have more of a cosmetic problem than anything and hopefully they'll rebud. However, I wonder if the scorching in some way 'sealed' the bark on the burnt branches, making it difficult for new buds to come through? I wouldn't think there's much you can do about that now though, if that happened.
