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This slow-growing, low maintenance, shade-tolerant evergreen winter-flowering shrub is a great all-rounder and fantastic for problem areas of the garden, or the shrub layer of woodland planting schemes. It has long, glossy, dark green leaves that clip fairly well into a low ornamental hedge up to about 1 metre.
The flowers in winter are small, white, and partially hidden by the leaves, but their strong, sweet, vanilla scent is a joy around the garden at a time when there isn't much else going on. If you don't clip them off, these mature into beautiful black fruit nestled at the base of the dark leaves.
View our selection of evergreen hedging, or our full range of garden shrubs.
Sweet Box bushes are only delivered pot-grown, year round.
Exceptionally shade-tolerant, it will grow (slowly) in an alley with no direct sun at all.
Suitable for any well-drained soil, it is drought tolerant when established, especially if you work in plenty of organic matter before planting and mulch in spring. It is a bit more demanding in full sun, where it needs shelter from the wind, and a consistently moist soil; the leaves will be more yellow than the deep green they are in shade.
Trim after flowering, in late Winter or early Spring.
Spacing a Sweet Box hedge: Plant at 5 per metre, 20cm apart, in a single row for an immediate hedge. If you are not in a hurry, plant at 3 per metre and in a few years the root suckers will fill it up nicely.
These are fabulous features in any garden and are ideal for winter gardens. They are excellent used in the same way you would use standard box hedging to define borders and edges. TV presenter and gardener Monty Don uses box to create a clear space around a climbing vegetable such as a runner bean, squash or pea planted around a sturdy frame. You could also plant sweet peas in the middle of a box-defined square, just making sure you have space to climb or reach over the hedge to pick them. Hydrangeas would make an excellent backdrop to the hedge allowed to grow to its full height and snowdrops would look fabulous underneath in winter, and help define the white flowers of the box. Ornamental grasses also look good paired with box, softening the rigidity of a topiary.
Native to China and the Himalayas, it is also known as Christmas box, and is in the same family as Buxus, Common Box. It is popular with flower arrangers in winter, as it brings a lovely fragrance into the house