Leddy hopes to have specific landscape design recommendations available by this fall as part of her PhD dissertation. Battling Boxwood Leaf Miners Another of Raupp's graduate students, Gabe D'Eustachio, is working on a project involving boxwoods at Pennsylvania's famed Longwood Gardens. It has a long history dating back to English formal gardens of an earlier era and is still an important component of modern American landscapes. Over the years, he adds, the boxwoods at Longwood have been damaged by the boxwood leaf miner, a small fly that lays its eggs in boxwood leaves. Their feeding causes blisters, discoloration, and the loss of many leaves.
Chemical pesticides are effective only during a specific time in the leaf miner's life cycle.
He also is working with staff at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., to develop resistant boxwood cultivars. Graduate student Paula Leddy examines azaleas for azalea lace bugs. Short Courses Conferences Information gleaned from research and demonstration projects is made available to members of the greenhouse and landscape industries and the general public through such programs as the Advanced Landscape IPM Short Course and the Greenhouse Management Short Course. The Advanced Landscape IPM Short Course is offered each January. Designed for professionals in the nursery, landscape maintenance, and arboricultural industries, the five-day program has been organized since 1988 by Extension entomologist Dr. John Davidson.