Dreaming of boxwood : what can this symbol evoke?

A growth one does not see

Boxwood takes decades to become a shrub, and its wood is so dense it sinks in water. Nothing grows more slowly or more solidly : what time takes long to make, it makes for a long while.

Dreams use this figure for what progresses unseen. A skill acquired over twenty years, a confidence slowly rebuilt, a relationship never declared and holding. Those who dream of boxwood often doubt they are advancing, precisely because nothing can be measured.

The question it poses is useful to them : on what scale do you measure your progress? Some things are observed only by comparing across years.

The plant one clips

Boxwood is the material of ordered gardens : low hedges, spheres, labyrinths. It bears clipping better than any other plant, which is why it is given shapes that are not its own.

That second side is more ambiguous, and dreams play on it. Clipped boxwood designates what has been constrained and accommodates it : a successful upbringing, an integrated discipline, an orderly life that stands. It also designates what never grew freely, and no longer knows what shape it would have taken.

The decisive detail is the state of the clipping. Neat and recent, it speaks of an order maintained ; old, with shoots sticking out, it speaks of something beginning to grow its own way again.

The shape of the boxwood changes the reading

• Neatly clipped boxwood — an order maintained, comfortable and without surprise.
• Shoots sticking out of the shape — something beginning to grow its own way again.
• Boxwood long left free — what you would have become without the successive clippings.
• A boxwood labyrinth — an order so perfect one gets lost in it, a frequent motif of highly organised lives.
• Boxwood one clips oneself — the constraint one imposes on oneself, to be distinguished from the one endured.
• A kept sprig of boxwood — the plant's ritual use, kept from year to year like a promise.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology takes an interest in clipped plants because they figure the relation between natural growth and an imposed form : all upbringing proceeds so, and the question is not whether to clip but how far. It notes that dreams of ordered gardens recur in those who have held their place well. Other readings retain boxwood's slowness and see a figure of what lasts because it took its time.