Formal garden questions

I'm slowly getting my head around a new garden and making plans for the future.

I have an area near the house that I would like to be formal and scented. I'm thinking of laying out small box hedges in geometric patterns with shingle areas in between and maybe some lavender.

So I have two questions really. Would you suggest building mesh formers to grow the box in? I'm sure I've seen that somewhere.

Secondly, for this I will need huge numbers of box and lavender. Would it be possible to buy a couple of plants and then take lots of cuttings to keep the cost down? If so am I too late this year?

Any thoughts and suggestions welcome.

Graeme

 

Hi Graeme, it's late now for cuttings .The best time is late spring through to late summer before the new growth turns 'woody'...You can buy bare root Box plants to plant now which are far less expensive than pot grown plants.If it's straight hedges you want you won't need any mesh just a good eye when clipping.
I love Box hedging and it sounds like a lovely project you're thinking of,go for it

 

I went to a local garden that had Box, the backs of the box plants were unkempt (fronts all smartly trimmed) and thus I was able to take cuttings from the spare material at the back, so if you have a chum with similar Box plants that might do for you too?

I took mine about this time of year from memory, and I now have about 1,000 plants. However:

They will take a couple of years before they are ready to plant out
Box Blight is an ever present danger, so you might want to consider something else (Ilex crenata perhaps? Slow growing, so even slower from cuttings :( )

Make sure you plant the Box at exact spacings, otherwise they will look wrong for a long time! Typically they are planted about 9" apart for Parterre, and any variation sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb .

I have not found a cheap source of plants for bulk planting of Box (or Ilex crenata) so cuttings was the only way for the qty I wanted ...

Lavender is available cheaply though, provided you are not fussy on variety. For example Lavender Munstead is sold by Van Meuwen for about 20p a plant, but they come in tiny plugs so suggest you buy them in the Spring. Potted up and grown on they will be ready to plant out the following Spring (they will be "ready" by 1st Autumn, but that's not a good time to plant Lavender, better to keep it under cover (i.e. not out in the rain) for the first winter and plant quite late the following Spring to give it a flying start (I think June is recommended, but it might even be July).

 

P.S. Buying a plant for cuttings is unlikely to work, as I doubt there will be enough "material" for many cuttings, hence getting some off a mate who already has a plant would be a better plan I think.