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Caring For Boxwoods In 6 Easy Steps
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Boxwoods are an excellent addition to a formal landscaped garden. They really can be shaped into almost any design your heart can think of. Boxes are excellent, hardy shrubs in gardens that keep their vibrant green all year – even in the bitter cold north. Yes, boxwoods desire some attention and some TLC will be mandatory. These couple of steps will keep your boxwoods’ perfect all year:
1. Stear clear of irregular mixing of your boxwood bushes. If you have a boxwood hedge that needs replacement it is totally possible to have issue finding the exact same replacement to what you already got. For this scenario, look for a variation with a similarity in the branch. Boxes come in many different colors of green-so definitely look at what you have and what the nursery has and make some choices based on what will look good together. Alternatively you’ll get an array fast and slow growing boxes with a few being a lime green and others being darker green giving you a undesirable end result!
2. Each area is different, so doing some research before constructing your new boxwood hedge designs is solid advice. Look for a boxwood that is a vigorous grower, drought tolerant and disease resistant.The Korean Boxwood, as an example, grows rapidly and in the northern climates is less subject to disease.
3. Spring maintenance of your boxwood’s starts with the addition of a half a cup per plant of a nice organic acidic fertilizer that includes peat, compost, dehydrated manure and some special evergreen nutrients around the base of the bushes. Roots have to be protected and will require you to accomodate them with organic matter each couple of seasons.
4. The process of boxwood pruning is a pretty forward thing with a couple rules worth knowing. Never, never, never prune your boxwoods late in the fall, and, always, always, always be sure to let new spring growth “harden off” before you go out give’em that first “hair cut” of the year. If you didn’t know, pruning in the fall promotes new and tender sprigs to grow that are going to brown in the spring. This is going to cause a dead look for several months before new growth comes in so your best not to do it. People enjoy beautiful bright green boxwoods in the winter and will really frown down on the dead brown. Most would agree having dead boxwoods is worse than having a little shag going on.
5. Boxwood’s have a shallow root system and because of that they can dry out quickly. With that, never forget to mulch your boxs’. This is going to help the boxes roots to retain the water they do get and protect them. The flip side of this is to be careful not to over mulch them to the point where you have buried the base of the plant and you end up creating a rotten bark situation that could ultimately kill the bush. Everything in moderation is a fine rule to live by even in the garden.
6.Periodically do a check of your boxes for fungal type diseases. Generally quite strong and capable, even boxwoods have been know to ocassionaly be overrun by plant illness. If you are suspecting that the problems with your boxwoods is disease and not just winter damage then you’ll be best doing a bit of simple investigation first. Majority of the shrub diseases that are common can be fixed using sprays. Just make sure you diagnose the problem correctly before you start spraying chemicals all over the place. This is not always as easy as it sounds, but you might have to just dig out the shrub that is causing you the issues before it gets worse. While replacing a single green tree shrub won’t cost too much, replacing an whole section can damper any day.
Enjoy this time of landscaping…boxwoods are really great for landscaping wheather you have a formal or even informal setting.
For a beautiful selection of outdoor home and garden decor to accent your landscapes, be sure to check out Cool Garden Things with their decorative recycled glass hummingbird feeders and ceramic gel fuel firepots.
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