Yew is a great alternative to box, and it’s nice to use a native species where possible, especially as it’s one of the very few conifers that are truly native to Britain. It’s largely disease free too.
The foliage is rather dark, but there are a few other alternatives widely used as box replacements. Given the prevalence of those two diseases I would be tempted to get a replacement established now rather than fight the diseases, knowing that they are likely to return sooner or later.
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Cloud tree exactly 3 years difference. Lower branches need to be bigger and I still haven’t repotted it into a bigger and nicer pot.
Ilex crenata makes a good substitute for box and it flowers too.
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Funnily enough we have a yew next to it and another in a different patch which self seeded.
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You can’t go wrong with yew, I’m surprised it’s not more popular.
Produces brilliant hedging and doesn’t need much care.
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Yeah, but yew doesn’t have the cute little leaves and is ugly.
A yew hedge takes a lot of beating and only needs a trim once a year.
Isn’t yew the classical graveyard tree?
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Yes, it goes back to pagan days .
The one in the adjoining village goes back a thousand years and maybe much longer .
It is a shadow of it’s former self
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I’ve a small bush in my garden and I looked it up a while ago thanks to this forum. I then discovered that yew can grow into enormous trees. Something I never knew since we don’t have that tradition in the Netherlands.
I’ve just got back from my day of volunteer gardening at an English Heritage site in the SouthEast of England. We have about 250 metres of box hedging which we need to maintain in as traditional style as possible. We first encountered the dreaded box tree moth caterpillars about four years ago. The damage that year was pretty severe and the first hour or so of every day was spent on hands and knees picking off and “dispatching” the caterpillars by hand. In year two, we did try a biological control - Bacillus thuringiensis - which is effective but prohibitively expensive. Since then we’ve learned to live with the pests.
We originally had a mix of common box (Buxus semervirens) and dwarf box (suffruticosa). The common box appears to be far more resilient so we’ve replaced the dwarf box with common box grown from cuttings. Each spring we prune about 50 metres of hedge, cutting the centre really hard and just leaving the outer edges standing - making a sort of U shape. The increased air flow helps counter box blight but any caterpillars that do hatch are now easy to spot by our robin and blackbird populations - which have learned to enjoy this new source of food. The pruned hedge sections initially look hideous but they grow back within a couple of years. Our visitors ask us about box maintenance more than any other topic. Many of them have lost hedges or topiary almost overnight.
This year, with no manual or biological control other than the birds (we never use chemical control), we have no more than a couple of dozen isolated spots of damage.
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Our Box is right next to the bird feeding station. It seems they find it much easier to pick choice bits from the feeders than have a go at the caterpillars!
Used to know it well as came up from school to walk the ridgeway from there.
As it happens I used to live in Aldsworth, Glos and work with a chap called Aldworth.
Needless to say Painswick churchyard has 99 yews, and I have two trees in my garden. I must propagate more.
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Apparently to prevent sheep from being allowed to graze in the churchyard by the common people - it is poisonous to sheep
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On the subject of yews @Mike-B and @Ian2001 I have some friends who used to live in a Bishop’s House next to a rural parish church where the yews separated the house from the church yard. This hedge was impressive, although not as impressive as the one in Cirencester. However, every year they used to send the yew clippings off to a pharmaceutical company who extracted drugs used in chemotherapy. Apparently according to Cancer Research UK thid is no longer necessary.
Yew clippings to make chemotherapy
There are two chemotherapy drugs that were originally developed from yew trees:
- docetaxel (Taxotere) was first made from the needles of the European yew tree
- paclitaxel (Taxol) was made from the bark of the Pacific yew tree
Some UK firms used to collect yew tree clippings as part of the process of making the drugs. But they are no longer doing this. Both drugs can now be made synthetically in the laboratory.
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Funny, how we know more about plants etc, that probably the old herbalists were often closer to science than we once gave them credit with .
I have been to Africa about twenty times and the local knowledge of herbs etc can be pretty awesome .
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I had a Pittosporum hedge which is a nice alternative but unfortunately the very cold December we had killed all our plants. We have looked at Yew, which is a great alternative, but it is apparently poisonous to cats and we have three, one of which will literally eat everything he shouldn’t.
There is a large RHS study looking at alternatives (see their web site) and one they recommend is Podocarpus. When I was looking for plants to buy earlier in the year they were hard to find but perhaps will be more common in the autumn.
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Bought this azalea mollis this year and kept thinking about the pot it needed. This oriental plant…needs an oriental pot! Well, of course it doesn’t, but the psychology behind that makes me see nothing else working now. It all became clear and has now changed my view on pot choices. I have lots of British glazed pots and greek terracotta ones, but none would have suited this plant as good as this oriental one.
The rich (but tasteful) yellow of this plant literally glows as dusk approaches. I have seen nothing like it. Even when we bought it, 3 different groups of people stopped us and commented as we took it to the van. Monitors don’t show the colours to their glory. One of the main attractions is the mollis flowers before the leaves form and so you have a beautiful structure of pompoms.
Potted in 40% peat, 40% Canna Pro coir, 13% melcourt fine bark, 7% perlite. 540ml Ecothrive Charge and a small amount of seaweed meal added. Roots coated with TNC Plus and Rootgrow ericaceous mycorrhizal powder.
PH sweet spot for azalea is 4.5-6.0. I’ll have to watch the peat doesn’t reduce the ph too much in the long term, as then the carefully buffered coir (which is 5.5-6.2) and will begin the breakdown too quickly, changing the cation characteristics and possibly locking up the nutrient exchange.
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Is that Acer ‘Orange Dream’? I have one in the ground in my yard and it seems to thrive. A good ericaceous feed now will help and you may get some lovely autumn colour in late October. I’ve had some success with acers in pots but those in the ground are heathier / more vibrant, especially after a few years.
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Just to jump in here, don’t feed the acer at this time of year. It will only unnaturally force it to grow and the new growth won’t harden in time for winter. The damage caused then can introduce disease. If anything, use a weak seaweed watering, which will help settle in without feeding.
BTW, acers love pots. They like their roots to be ever so slightly restricted and enjoy being in the perfect compost mix. The can live indefinitely in pots.
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