Dear Editor,

I read your recent article on Box Moth with great interest and great dismay. I deliver Stotfold News to Salisbury, Palmerstone and Kipling. In the four weeks since I last delivered, I have seen huge lengths of box hedge wiped out and rendered completely barren with no greeness.

I have a small box hedge and fortunately my new neighbour alerted me to the Box Moth on it. I sprayed it two months ago and do so every month if I see any ‘webs’ and it is fine. But in my extensive daily walks (around Fairfield and beyond) and today as I delivered Stotfold News I take note of the extent of this pest. I now see hardly any hedges in Fairfield without moth damage. I fear that next month when I deliver I will see huge amounts of devastation.

I fear that Box Moth is rife and growing and in a few months at Fairfield we will be surrounded by swathes of dead hedge – apart from the very few that are being sprayed by their owners. That would be a massive eyesore, not to mention the destruction of a habitat for the forms of life other than the Moth which thrive within the hedges.

Name supplied