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Evergreen dwarf box is the traditional plant to use in knot gardens, and there’s none better. It’s long-lived, tough and resilient, and will withstand a very wide range of growing conditions. Our own knot gardens pass with flying colours on a very windy site.

Dwarf Box only needs a trim once or twice a year and is fairly easy to propagate by cuttings or division. The flowing lines and under-and-over effects of a well designed knot are easy to achieve with box, making a really low-maintenance evergreen feature that you’ll enjoy all year round. And it provides the ideal showcase for interplanting with dwarf spring bulbs.

As box is so obliging, where you choose to place your knot garden is really up to you, but if it can be seen from a window it will delight all year round, and when the snow falls onto it in winter, it takes on an added dimension.

Other plants to consider for the knot are cotton lavender, which can be grown in association with box to give a two-tone effect, wall germander with its glossy dark green leaves, or you might like one of the dwarf varieties of lavender, although they can’t be tightly clipped and will give a shaggier effect.

....or a contemporary interpretation
Only your imagination will limit the style of your knot garden, and there’s no need to follow tradition.

You’ll find our planting plans are versatile and can be used as layouts for exciting contemporary interpretations in plants or hard landscaping. You could use concrete or brick pavers, instead of plants, and inset them into your lawn, gravel or a pebble mosaic. Or you could use turf for the design and inset that into a hard surrounding area.

You might like to try something really wacky like burying wine bottles so only the dimpled bottoms show through a bed of multi-coloured glass beads or coloured gravel - very cool! Or how about a knot made from a really ‘now’ organic material like woven willow? Spiky grasses growing out of sand would certainly be different, or a temporary knot that appears for only a short time each year - snowdrops or crocuses in a lawn, for example, would mark the passing seasons.

There really are no limits to the number of imaginative interpretations and yours might be the start of a new tradition!

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Knot Gardens Unravelled.
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Knot Gardens Unravelled, 9 Main Street, Lowick, Berwick-upon-Tweed,
Northumberland TD15 2UD, England.
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