Old Boxwood in New Gardens 
SATISFYING THE CRAZE FOR IMMEDIATE ANTIQUE GARDEN 
EFFECTS—THE COST AND PROCESS OF TRANSPLANTING—THE 
NORMAL GROWTH—CULTURE THAT INSURES LONGEVITY—SOME 
UNCLAIMED SPECIMENS 
No garden ever lacked charm in which there was an 
abundance of sturdy, fragrant old boxwood 
S INCE antique 
boxwood is 
about the only 
“antique” which 
can be grown in 
our gardens, it is 
not strange that 
the quest for 
available bushes 
has acquired un¬ 
paralleled impetus 
of late years. It 
has become the 
fad to pick up old 
box bushes and many places 
have been shorn of their an¬ 
cestral charm; but there is 
this consolation — it is being 
well cared for and appreciated 
in its new locations. 
When a country place of 
any pretention is created now¬ 
adays it must be made to look 
reasonably old, and this ap¬ 
plies particularly to the gar¬ 
den. The impatient owner 
will not wait for slow-grow¬ 
ing things to mature. Lie 
wants them full-grown to 
with for immediate 
Likely as not, if con- 
are favorable, the 
designer will rely 
upon an antique boxwood bush or two, procured perhaps from 
some old homestead in the neighborhood, to give his garden the 
proper touch of age. And so it happens that bushes and whole 
hedges even of antique boxwood are in great demand to-day. 
The old-time gardens of Long Island and those along the Con¬ 
necticut shore, long famous for their boxwood, have furnished 
begin 
effects, 
ditions 
garden 
On the estate of James L. Breese at 
transplanted box hedge lines the drive 
the 
country places which have 
many fine specimens to 
sprung up about them. 
The prices for choice specimens are oftentimes fabulously 
high. For this reason, if for no other, antique boxwood should, 
if possible, be inherited. When you try to buy it at what seems 
like a reasonable price, ancestral boxwood is usually treasured so 
highly on the old places where it has grown for generations, 
almost like one of the family, that it takes a pretty good offer 
to arouse any desire to part with it. Why not? Besides being 
comforting, it is some little distinction to have growing in your 
back yard or before your door-step an old box bush which your 
great, great, great grandmother planted there. This you may 
never be able to appreciate, but you will find it difficult to de¬ 
preciate such sentiments. The age, size and beauty of the box¬ 
wood also enter into the transaction and make it more difficult 
to arrive at any uniform market value. 
Some idea of its appraised value may be gathered, however, 
by what it cost a Philadelphia man to transplant a century-old 
hedge. The hedge was twelve hundred feet long and it cost him 
nine dollars a linear foot to move it, or $10,800 for the whole 
job. The actual cost of the hedge cannot be definitely calculated, 
as it was there when the estate was purchased; but think what 
he must have capitalized its value at, to justify so large an 
expenditure for transplanting it alone! 
Nor is it at all strange that antique boxwood should be so 
highly prized by makers of gardens, for the available supply is 
limited and it takes box four or five generations to grow to 
maturity. Under the most favorable conditions, horticulturists 
tell us, boxwood grows not more than three inches in diameter 
in a quarter of a century. In other words, it takes eight years 
for it to add an inch to its 
diameter. Growing so slowly, 
at least a century is needed to 
make any sort of a showing 
with box, except, of course, 
in a small way. 
In this country boxwood 
grows to be anywhere from 
twelve to twenty feet high. 
The average height of a full- 
grown bush would probably 
be about sixteen feet with a 
mean diameter of, say, ten 
and a half inches. This may 
seem like an enormous stem 
for a bush of that height, but 
old boxwood bushes almost 
Southampton, L. I., a 
approaching the house 
always have 
trunks out of all 
proportion to 
their height. In 
full-grown bushes 
the stem will 
vary from six to 
ten and a half 
inches near the 
ground. This, of 
course, applies to 
the ornamental or 
common variety 
— the B u x u s 
Sempervirens of 
the horticultur¬ 
ists. 
Despite the 
growing demands 
in many parts of 
the country for 
By introducing box, a Southern Colonial portico at the 
Breese house instantly assumed the verisimilitude of 
antiquity 
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