Tigger's Green Paw
Buxus Sempervirens - Common Boxwood

Animal Safety: Dogs: No Cats: No Rabbits: No
Free Grazing: No

Lifespan: several hundred years
Common Boxwood is an evergreen, which means it keeps its leaves in winter.
They grow around 6 inches a year. It can take from 5 years to 30 years for a boxwood hedge to grow to the desired height, depending on the variety, growing conditions and size required.
Common boxwood can usually grow up to 4.5 metres (15 feet).
Smaller boxwood shaped into topiary are very popular in home gardens.
Some varieties have been created to cater for different sized topiary. Some are created to have small leaves, grow tall, grow wide and denser foliage.

About:
Common boxwood was first recorded as being used by the Egyptians around 4000BC
They planted the boxwood into their gardens and trimmed them into formal hedges.

No one is sure who exactly were the first to create ornate shapes, called topiary, with the common boxwood, but it has been around for a surprisingly long time.

There is evidence that the Common Boxwood once grew in England around 7000BC, but it died out.
It was brought back to England by the Romans around 100BC. The Romans took shaping the boxwood into formal hedges and more ornate shapes.

. During the Georgian era, around the 1700’s, when capability Brown was designing grand landscapes, he removed the box hedges for being too formal.

During the 1800’s and 1900’s the formal layout and an increased interest in topiary saw a revival of the boxwood.

Common boxwood is poisonous to cats, dogs and rabbits, but they would not usually choose to eat the shrub.

If you have common boxwood, do watch out if dogs and cats are peeing on it, as their urine can damage it.
In early summer the boxwood gives off a strong odour when the sun shines on it.