African Boxwood Myrsine africana

African boxwood builds a dense, stiffly upright shrub on fine woody stems, clothed in small rounded leaves that are dark and glossy enough to read as box from a few paces. New growth flushes bronze red before hardening to deep green, and plants are male or female, with females carrying small berries pressed tight against the stems. It is grown almost entirely as clipped structure: low hedging, edging along a path, mounded topiary and formal shapes in pots, holding its outline through the year.

Why it replaces English box in hot, dry gardens

Myrsine africana is the shrub most often specified where Buxus has failed. It comes from dry country across Africa, Arabia and the Himalaya, and it takes heat, dry spells and thin soil in its stride. It is also untroubled by box blight and box hedge caterpillar, the two problems that have made English box a liability in many Australian gardens. Soil matters more here than climate. It wants ground that drains, improved with coarse compost and raised slightly if you garden on clay. For a low clipped hedge set plants 25 to 30cm apart, or around 40cm for a taller boundary line, and be patient while the line closes rather than trying to force it with heavy feeding. One thing kills it more often than anything else, and that is winter waterlogging. Sitting in cold, compacted, wet clay through a wet winter rots the roots, and that, rather than frost or drought, is what finishes established plants. Where drainage is genuinely poor, plant into a raised bed or a wide mound of improved soil rather than digging a hole in clay and hoping the winter stays dry.

Myrsine or Xylosma for a hedge line

The other clipped evergreen in this range is Xylosma senticosum, and the choice between them comes down to whether you want people to touch the hedge. Xylosma carries short spines along its stems, which is exactly why it works as a barrier along a fence line and exactly why it is a poor neighbour for a path or a play area. Myrsine has no spines, a finer clipped face and a lower natural scale, so it is the one for edging, low formal lines and topiary in pots where hands and legs brush past it constantly. If you need both, run Xylosma on the boundary and Myrsine inside it. Both shear to a flat face, but only Myrsine will hold a ball or a cone in a pot without an argument about it.

Clipping and feeding a Myrsine hedge

Clip little and often rather than once a year. Take the tips out of young plants in their first season to force branching low down, then shear after each growth flush from spring to early autumn, stopping before the coldest part of winter so soft regrowth is not caught out. Avoid cutting hard into bare old wood, which is slow to break. Feed with a complete slow release fertiliser in early spring and again after the midsummer clip, water it in, and keep mulch pulled back a hand's width from the stems. Underplant the shaded strip at its base with kidney weed if bare soil bothers you.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 3 sizes, from 140mm up to 5L, priced from $16.95 to $29.95 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. These are younger plants, priced for planting in quantity, and they establish quickly once in the ground. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to when to plant in Australia.