Weevils. Enough of them being present to spoil specimens seems to coincide with broken down, comparatively airless potting medium. Otherwise they will often eat off heucheras and primulas planted in the ground at the soil line. In both situations keeping plants refreshed as in repotted with adequate frequency or lifted, divided and replanted (rather than being left unattended for years at a time) when growing in terra firma appears to be called for.

@Embothrium Well, I’ve just spent @ 40 minutes looking at pics of weevil larva - that’s exactly what’s eating my plant roots - and reading about life cycles of vine weevils. Yuck! I’m wondering if some of these came with my new Coral Bells from the nursery. But, the adult weevil damage pictures of big chunks out of leaf edges sure looks like what I’ve seen on my Bergenia, some Coral Bells & a Clematis & a couple of my hardy fuchsia this summer. Seems I may have had this growing problem & not known until the larva cycle started. I do divide my older coral bells in the ground & my big pots are refreshed with new plants or everything taken out & rearranged in them each spring. Maybe the best plan for control is beneficial nematodes and diatomaceous earth? I did have an active tree frog population in my yard but didn’t see many this past year so maybe I’ve lost some of my natural controls for these pests. I have lots of birds too so don’t want to spray & kill off everything. Not clear if that can be done now or wait until spring.

Today I sprayed package of 7 million Beneficial Nematodes around all of my planting beds & sprayed the rest on grass & groundcover. Figured it was wet enough with the rain we’ve been getting here in SW WA & the ground is still warm. I bought them from local Wilco farm store & they were refrigerated & in a bag. On further reading, I learned there are different kinds of BN’s - who knew that? Not me! I’m not sure I got the right kind for weevils or their larvae with the Steinernema Feltiae that I bought. Figured I’ll need to do this again in spring so I’ll read more & pay attention to which kind I get.