My Blue point juniper pine tree has turned half brown...?

First, drop the pine, it is just Blue Point juniper. The reasons for brown a great. If it is on one side possible causes include: cut roots from trenching, herbicide drift onto the plant, herbicide applied on one side of the plant, cold/freezing/wind on one side, insects (for example spider mites on the side closest to a warm wall, or a strangle root underground that has wrapped around the trunk and is cutting off food and water to one side.

Drought is more a general tree condition, but if most of the roots are on one side due to soil conditions or walls and the plants is not receiving sufficient moisture, it will be one sided.....sorta. Flooding will cause similar appearances if the roots have died.....no water can be taken up. Putting plastic under junipers effective seals out oxygen. Plants need oxygen in the soil to take in nutrients. It takes about 5-7 years for plants to show oxygen deprivation.

Junipers will naturally brown out in the middle as they age because their foliage shades the interior. If you've been shearing the plant in the mistaken belief this is the proper way to prune junipers (a problem 90% of gardeners and 99.9% landscapers make) the resulting regrowth accentuates the brown out inside by creating a nice dense outside thus cutting out sunlight inside.

Junipers do not regrow foliage from brown areas. There are no living buds back behind green living tissue. So no, it will not regrow foliage where it is brown. What you hope for it is still strong enough to continue to put out tip growth and NOBODY prunes it off.

So first try to find out why it is growing: shearing, root disturbance, drought or one of the insects that really bother junipers: spider mites and spider mites......scale sometimes.

Then decide if it could grow out and still work in the landscape. it would be far bigger and open able to look through it, not the dense plant you had. If the answer is no, replace it.

Juniper Blue Point

Blue Point Juniper

Take a piece of white paper and go to the green part of your juniper, right at the edge of the brown section. Shake the branches there onto your paper. Then smear your hand over the white paper. If you see little red or brown stripes of bug-blood on the paper, then you have spider mites. You will need to spray with a miticide now, and again 10-14 days later. Then spray down the juniper once a month to reduce the chances of spider mites re-attacking the shrub after a few months.

There has been a disease that has spread through the midwest this year...that may be the cause and you may eventually lose the entire tree. The easiest thing to do at this point, is to prune out the brown areas. The may look bare in spots, but if the whole tree is healthy you will wee new growth by summer.

depends on what part of the country your in. Around here we get a lot of wind and it burns the trees. Wind burned trees do recover but you will have to wait for spring to see if it does. Could also be shock from previous years of drought, too much rain etc. Stress shows up in trees years down the road.

Thankyou all for your answers and opinions!