When to prune box?
- Botanical name
- Buxus sempervirens
- Family
- Buxaceae
Box is pruned from July to August. It is planted from October to April.
Box is a woody perennial.
Box has small, dense leaves, so shearing leaves a smooth, closed surface, which suits a hedge and clipped shapes. One shearing a year holds the form. Box is not sheared in hot weather, because the fresh leaves scorch.
For a low edging compact varieties are used and planted closer together. Unsheared box grows into a large shrub, so a single specimen takes up more space than one set in a hedge.
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Box through the year
- pruning
- planting
In short
Growing conditions
Is box toxic to cats and dogs?
Yes. Toxic to cats and dogs, toxic parts: leaves.
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
- Signs
- The leaves turn brown and drop, and bare patches open up in the hedge. Young shoots carry black streaks and die back. In damp weather white cushions of spores sit on the underside of the leaves. If instead there are webs of silk, green caterpillars with white stripes and leaves eaten in half circles, it is the box tree caterpillar and not this disease.
- Prevention
- Keep bought plants apart for a month before planting them, because the products used at the nursery only hold the disease back and do not destroy it. Clip less often, so the hedge does not close up and air can move through. Shape the top rounded and clip only in dry weather. Disinfect the tools between one part of the garden and the next. Do not water over the foliage, and mulch the soil under the bushes so that rain does not splash.
- What to do
- In dry weather dig out and remove badly affected plants, and on a treasured one cut out the affected parts. Pick up the fallen leaves under the bush and take off the top layer of soil. Put what you remove into a bag and not onto the compost. The most reliable way is to replace box with another plant for the hedge or the topiary.
- Signs
- The bush is stripped and laced with white silk. Young caterpillars are greenish yellow with a black head, full-grown ones up to four centimetres long, greenish with black and thin white stripes. They gnaw the bark as well, which can girdle a shoot. The pupa is hidden in a white cocoon between the leaves. The moth has white wings with a brown edge.
- Prevention
- Look inside the bush from early spring on: the caterpillars overwinter small, between leaves spun together, and go for food on the first warm days. There are at least two generations a year and they feed from March to October, so one inspection is not enough. The moths fly well and are drawn to light.
- What to do
- Pick the caterpillars off by hand while there are few of them. As biological protection use Bacillus thuringiensis, which works only on caterpillars and only while they eat it off the leaf, so the application has to reach the inside of the bush and has to be repeated for the next generation.
Check the registration and the label before use.
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Sources about the plant: ASPCA Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Oregon State University, Royal Horticultural Society, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 28 August 2026. The problem descriptions also draw on: EPPO Global Database.