Box hedging

I am wanting to edge my front garden borders with some box / buxus hedging.

Obviously this would be low level, about 30cms.

Would I be better using Common Box - or spending the extra and buying the Dwarf box ?

Anyone have any recommendations on a good place to buy it from ?

 

I think that the dwarf Suffruitcosa box is much more prone to Box blight. It grows incredibly slowly ... so if the plants are not "already" the height that you need then you have got a long wait ... (Well, that's my understanding, suggest you confirm it independently).

So personally I would go with bog-standard Sempervirens Box and cut it "short" for the height you want. Whether 30cm is hard to achieve with standard Box I don't know, although I suppose, thinking about it, I see Box balls / pyramids being sold [for exorbitant prices!!] that are no taller than that - so its probably fine.

You need to plant them DEAD STRAIGHT otherwise those small low hedges will for-ever look naff. My advice would be to plant with a plank rather than just a string, and get them upright, and 100% evenly spaced. You do need quite a few plants-per-metre (compared to a normal hedge) - I think 5-per-metre.

Expensive game I'm afraid. Might be cheaper to buy cell-grown plants, and either pot them on yourself for a year or two, or plant them out and nuture in-situ and wait ...

You can buy Instant Hedge in Box for about £100 per metre - whether you can get fully-formed ones as low as 30cm (possibly cheaper) I don't know.

Personally, all things being equal, I would plant bare-rooted in the Winter planting season (rather than pot-grown) as being the route to best-quality and cost-effective.

Ashridge Trees sell bareroot 15/20cm at about £1.50 each, and 30/40 cm at about £2.75. I've bought (but not Box) from them and always had excellent quality plants.

I've also bought Cell-grown hedging plants (although not Box) from Trees Online and had really good quality plants. They sell 10-20cm Box for about £1.50 per plant.

There are other suppliers of cell-grown that are cheaper, I'm going to try them this Autumn so no personal experience. Price depends on the Qty you want ...

If you are worried about Box blight you could consider Japanese Holly - Ilex crenata - instead.