Bushes to box off?

[dangles]

Don't plant yew or laurel if there's children around - they are both poisonous.

G.

Every school I ever went to had Laurel bushes around them.

 

[dickm]

That's a good point about fencing, I planted a hornbeam hedge at a corner plot house last winter and had to put up 3 stands of wire through it to stop the local kids running and cycling through it.

Had wondered about beech, but hornbeam is possibly even better, as it holds its leaves for longer over winter (though my daughteer hates if for this and says it looks dead and depressing!). Nice timber for turning, though!

 

[treeturner123]

Berberis. Very spiky, little flowers; you can get different coloured leaves.

Phil

 

[Keith 66]

We have a large box tree about 90 years old in our front garden every year it seeds & we get scores of little box trees, my wife potted them up & planted them in a hedge. It was doing extremely well until last year when we got the dreaded box moth. The low hedges got infested with box moth caterpillars to the point we had no choice but to cut & burn them.
Surprisingly the old box tree has survived with little infestation, possibly the moths fly low to the ground? Blue tits love the caterpillars too & a pair have raised two clutches this year.