QQ about box hedging in front garden.

[Spidie]

We moved into our house in September last year and I am gradually rolling back the years of the previous couple doing very little in either house or garden (like for the last 30 years or so)... The front garden currently has very old 70s crazy paving arranged to the side of the concrete pavement-tile path. The mortar between the crazy paving is very deteriorated and when weeding between the stones last weekend, I realised that DH and I could quite easily just lift it all up. There are two L-shaped beds surrounding a central island bed. Last weekend, we encircled the island bed in the middle of w/ box with iris clumps at each corner and it looks much smarter. Inside are 4x rose bushes, a native hibiscus & my fave tulips (white & dark purple) and alliums. I plan to underplant with stachys. Once we've taken up the grim crazy paving, we thought we could put down some pebbles e.g. www.gardeners-world.net/product/20-30mm-Scottish-Garden-Pebbles-Bulk-Bag-7643.

The surrounding perimeter L-shaped bed (the side wall and street (front) side of the garden) has much bigger shrubs in...e.g. philadelphus, a rhodo, a witchhazel, snowball virbunum (all about 6 foot) & an almond tree (10ft). The other l-shaped bed along the path and house-front has low-trimmed camelia, azalea and hydrangeas (c. 2 ft). Will these two bigger beds look daft if I line them w/ box as well? Or shd I just put the pebble gravel up to the edge of the beds (the perimeter ones are about a foot higher than the paving as we live on a hill) and the others run the length of the front path. I like the idea of having the path lined with box as that separates the garden from the path iyswim, but wondering whether it would look a bit daft to have wee box plants in front of massive shrubs?

Any suggestions on what to retain the earth with? At the moment, there are some big white rocks (?) which might look better once the pebbles go down, but are currently adding to the whole 70s style effect! And how to stop the pebbles going onto the grim paved path?

Thanks for your suggestions!

You can get soil retention matting which you cut and then basically throw earth at - then grow through it, so you can both retain stones and plants. Our beds are edged with box. It works well because even in deep winter you still have the lush green of the box (with stick like shrubs struggling to survive behind them).

Thanks, WMMC! Can I ask what you have in the box-edged beds?

Oh gosh everything. Well let's see I have day lillies in one, I have nepeta (cat mint) and roses in another, lavender (big bushes) in another, two six foot wide hebes in another one. It does work. Oh and lots and lots of bulbs which are in lines behind the box so that when it's spring there is always a contrast to the green. We went mostly for grape hyacinth for early spring, then dwarf narcissi and then red and purple tulips for about now.

If you are worried about gravel spray btw, get some long planks about four inches wide and half bury them in the soil so you have a skirting board for your beds!