Is this what I think it is?

I suspect that my Box hedging and topiary have succumbed to box blight, box caterpillar, or both. I can't see any caterpillars but there are loads of dead leaves at the base of the plants and bare patches, plus a few webs which I originally thought might be from spiders. Two of my neighbours have similar symptoms with their Box, one has already removed all of her plants. The other neighbour's hedge looks worse than mine and was only planted a couple of months ago. Please confirm my suspicions , or otherwise. Thank you.

 

Looks like the moth to me .

 

Thanks @pete, it must be travelling north, another migrant problem .

 

Doesn't look like blight the webbing does favour moth , I've not seen moth or box blight round here yet .

 

Thanks @Perki, it'll have to go but there'll be space for more plants .

 

A great opportunity @Plantminded

 

You were right @pete and @Perki, on closer inspection I found one of the dreaded caterpillars. (It looks well fed .)

 

Yes @Bluejayway, an urgent mission to accomplish .

 

Yes, I zapped mine again this year, but even the near wild box in the local park is in the process of being killed.
Strange how it doesn't get all the publicity that other introduced tree pest and diseases get.

 

the moth has totally devestated the plant and very few ive seen are surviving without chemical treatment. the ones with good bird coverage seem to survive but otherwise they get devoured

 

I haven't seen a single box moth this year - there's nothing left for them to eat!

 

I was thinking a while back that the way the moth is going it's likely to run out of food plants.
Presumably why it's moving north.
Be interesting to see what happens after that.

 

I’m going to remove all mine as I don’t like using chemicals and waiting to see if the treatment works. I’m hoping that the moth is species specific and won’t develop a liking for any replacement plants .

 

I thought the same thing when it hammered every box in our area a few years ago. There are a few hedges that have survived and I think it is only because they were absolutely enormous. I'm guessing that naturally the plants they eat would be much larger, so could survive, but the smaller, topiary type ones, we grow in our gardens just don't stand a chance. I'm sure they will head back down south soon because box is still available in garden centres around here.

 

Well I saw them here this summer on my box so they are still around and I saw the caterpillars abseiling down out of a tree during the summer, only just avoided walking into them.
It was fairly large for box but it had hardly any leaves left.