Boxing Clever

When facing an aesthetic choice, I almost always opt for the traditional. David Austin v. Knockout (easy), Vaughan Williams v. Reich (give me a break), old Saab v. new Saab (what are you, blind?) and don’t even get me started about tennis v pickleball.  But lately I’ve been staring down a dilemma that makes my head spin.  I am speaking of Boxwood v. Holly.

This should be easy.  Everything about Box is fantastic—it grows at the perfect rate, it harkens back to a bygone age of British gardening, and even (as Leopold Bloom might say) “its fine tang of faintly scented (cat) urine” is great.  Its ability to be molded into topiary or left to create billowing cloud hedges gives you an unbelievable amount of flexibility.  In fact, Willow Greens Farm boasts a row of 200-year-old hedges-grown-into-monoliths that are some of the most impressive in the area.  Look closely, however, and you’ll see there are clouds on the horizon.

When viewed along the axis, you’ll see that these massive Boxes once lined a path

Rumblings from across the Atlantic tell of a possible Armageddon heading toward our beloved Buxus sempervirens that is too dire to ignore.  It’s called Boxwood Blight and it may (or may not) be coming for our shrubs.

I first heard of the blight when both Monty Don and Bunny Guinness began throwing in the trowel on their extensive hedges.  Years of trimming and treatments slowed but didn’t stop the advance, and finally both yanked out their Box and started anew.  The gardening press began running articles focused on “10 Plants You Can Use In Place Of Box” and growers began timidly pushing “More Blight-Resistant Box Cultivars”.  Both seemed a somewhat sad mix of optimism and acquiescence.  Here in the US most gardeners have been unaware of the risks or naive about the propensity of pathogens to ignore borders and menace the broader international community.  Give me a second, I’m sure I can come up with another example.

A gift from the previous owners. A sickly Box, planted in rubble, struggling against a north wall

Anyhoo (now, apparently, an acceptable word in the NYT Spelling Bee puzzle) all of this has been much on my mind as I started installing the foundational plants for the Arrival Court.  Daniel’s plan for this space included 15 Box plants next to the house and in the beds surrounding the gravel.  When I asked about the perils of blight, he replied “Well, I’m still using it in my designs”. Not exactly an endorsement.  A trip to our fantastic not-so-local garden center left me a bit disappointed.  In the place of their normally robust inventory was a very limited selection of quite small Box plants.  Further investigation uncovered that “there was an issue with our supplier and out of an abundance of caution we are not bringing any more in this year.”  When I mentioned Monty and Bunny’s struggles in England, a conspiratorial look to both sides preceded the revelation that “We’ve had at least two customers with some pretty devastating problems with Boxwood this year.  I think it’s coming.”  Sobering.

Coming from a different angle, the grower at my local-er garden center dismissed the threat of blight and wrote off the problems to climate change.  “Most of the English Boxwoods can’t survive in our increasingly hot climate.  That’s why I recommend the Korean Hybrids.  Kept well-fertilized, you shouldn’t have any problems.”  But the Korean and Japanese Boxes are not really the same as English Box, and with these cultivars coming in at three times the price of Holly, the view becomes much less worth the climb.

Eyeballing the first installation of the Hollies

So it was with a somewhat heavy heart that we loaded our carts with Ilex crenata “Green Lustre” and Ilex crenata “Helleri”.  Both are small-leafed Holly with a slow-to-medium growth rate and a reported ability to accept the shears.  Time will tell.  But it does feel like a compromise.

The installation was very straightforward as I had already amended and dug the soil.  I’ve also added six Deutzia “Nikko” per the planting plan and I’m thinking I will go a bit off-piste with a few Rosa rugosa (theoretically, deer-proof) and some Grasses and Alliums. But I better get moving.  We had our first frost last night.

Two bees take shelter in a Dahlia after the first frost

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NB. Last week’s newsletter included a link to a new page on our site which, alas, did not work. Let’s try again: This is probably of more interest to us than anyone else, but we now have a page devoted to our monthly Garden Updates — a diary of sorts that we can refer to as needed, or just look back and reminisce when the mood strikes. This page can also be reached from the navigation bar on our homepage.