Sunday 2nd June 2019.

Box is an enigmatic plant in the garden, surrounded by myth, legend and uncertainty….box blight, box moth, when to clip; when not to clip; ooops! Derby Day was yesterday, the cut-off benchmark date for when all Box clipping must be completed, or so they say. I have been guilty of the same torment and when chatting with a fellow Head Gardener, who was a bit of a Box expert, quite a few years ago I asked that very same question…..”when do you cut your Box?”

His answer?.....”Whenever we get the time”. This made me feel human and realise that I was ok fitting it in and around the rest of the gardening tasks. For example clipping the individual Box edged Potager beds when the vegetables have been harvested and new plants are to go in is good timing. Similarly wading in to clip a Box ball that is surrounded by blooming Bearded Irises would be folly and only ruin the scene by the odd stomp of a boot, however careful, wait until the Irises have done their thing. My policy was to cut from mid-May all the way through to September; obviously avoiding cutting during extreme heat.

Weather conditions can sway the decision making process too, as mentioned I wouldn’t recommend clipping Box in extreme heat, you’d get terrible burn-back of the exposed stems and foliage and as for wet weather I clip if it needs doing. The other day I clipped a rose Planted Box parterre in constant drizzle, an uncomfortable process due to the fact that the foliage stuck to everything; but it needed to be done and my time-table was tight.

Blight and Moth strike fear in anyone that has Box and can make having this plant a liability; especially in gardens where it is the principal feature. The older I get the less inclined I am to use chemicals, in my own garden going for a more holistic approach with a soil up philosophy. Whether it be running dogs or plants, good nutrition is the foundation on which resilient health is built. I have three specimens of Box in my mixed border and along with everything else I apply mycorrhizal feed to the beds and soil, even planters too. Alongside this I spray regularly with a proprietary ‘plant invigorating’ potion that’s basically, after looking on the label, a mild soap spray, laced with sequestered iron and nitrogen. I spray once a week and it’s stopped the aphid getting out of hand; also I avoid ladybirds and if they get the odd drop it’s not going to kill them. The box gets this spray, to run-off level. I’m not saying these two measures will prevent and wipe out blight and moth; but good nutrition will help defend and make any shrub more resistant to attack and the regular soap spray will kill some of the pest and generally make life awkward for the survivors. Post clipping I’d also recommend one of the proprietary ‘Bordeaux Mixture’ sprays that are based on copper and lime, these are nearly organic and usually have a feed incorporated so it won’t do any harm after clipping to treat the clipped shrubs with this mild fungicidal tonic. In the end it’s all about finding a system that works for the ‘operative in the field’.  For me I have a Box clipping season between mid-May and early September that is dictated to by the day to day management of mixed borders. Good nutritional health is promoted and pests/diseases lives are made awkward by routine environmentally friendly sprays.

“the greatest facility that ever entered the garden was noticing” Davies.J, 1987. Taken from the book The Victorian Kitchen Garden.

I once asked another gardener, that seemed, to me a bit of an academic, why there were so many different approaches to gardening; but they all seemed to work whether it be Lunar, bio-dynamic, organic, ‘conventional’, companion-planting. Their answer was that all of these systems, when successful, are practised by individuals that believe in the system and are also constantly observing their ‘crop’, noticing irregularities and reacting to them by putting in timely measures, routine measures have a discipline to them. I’m going to leave it there as this is making me out be some sort of obsessive that stares at their garden; but that might be me being a late Leo on the cusp of Virgo!