Four years ago, when Erin Schanen of The Impatient Gardener discovered the signs of boxwood blight in her garden, hers became only the fifth confirmed home garden case in the state of Wisconsin. As a longtime boxwood fan whose shrubs lent character and year-round color to her yard, the news was bleak.
But Erin has since transformed challenge into opportunity, using new blight-resistant Better Boxwood® varieties to reimagine her landscape. From the undulating pruned boxwood hedges around her vegetable garden to a lush new planting at her property’s edge, Erin’s Better Boxwoods are helping her add brilliant, blight-resistant color and structure back to her plant palette.
One of Erin’s latest projects, a beautiful mixed hedge, sees Skylight™ play a starring role in the naturalistic privacy planting along her driveway and property line. When too-tall trees and shrubs began encroaching on much-needed sun exposure, Erin envisioned a new property hedge that offered eye-level screening and visual appeal while letting the light shine bright.
“Since this mixed hedge was intended to be both deciduous and evergreen, I thought it was really important to work in some broadleaf evergreens into the mix. But the problem is, up here in the colder areas of the country, not many broadleaf evergreens grow well. In fact, very few of them will work in this specific situation. Also, because this is a long border with varying sun and shade, we needed something that would work in both.”
Better Boxwood to the rescue! Erin grouped the ten Skylights into three clusters of three, plus a single accent. She has since given the Skylights only minimal clipping to highlight their attractive natural architecture. The result? A layout that softens the line of the driveway while providing an attractive screen for both neighbors. Skylight’s blight resistance and deer tolerance are particularly key in Erin’s Wisconsin landscape, where deer pressure is constant. Now standing about two feet tall in their third year, these boxwoods are thriving with only light shaping to encourage fullness, making them a low-maintenance yet high-impact addition.
“You might not actually even recognize these Skylights as boxwoods when you first look at them because I don’t think we see boxwoods that are grown naturally very often. Boxwoods are amazing for hedging and clipping and turning into topiarized shapes, and I’ve got plenty of them that are shaped into meatballs or other shapes. I do love that structure, but I also don’t think that has any business being in a casual border, and that wasn’t the intention. I didn’t want more maintenance and clipping. I just wanted a nice broadleaf evergreen that would grow in an attractive habit.“
Surrounding the Skylight clusters is a diverse foliage palette that plays with color, form, and movement, from silvery sageleaf willow to dogwood to Norway spruce. Together, the diverse hedge offers something colorful and new in every season.
With this project, Erin demonstrates yet again that resilience can be beautiful. Her new border isn’t just a screen: it’s a living tapestry of form and foliage that honors the lessons of the past while paving the way for an enduring, easy-care future.
“Since discovering boxwood blight on my property, I have not brought in anything that wasn’t a Better Boxwood. I’ve stuck with Better Boxwood because they were bred to be blight-resistant, and it’s one more thing that I don’t have to think about!”
To follow along as Erin’s new planting matures and see more of her creative projects, visit her YouTube channel, The Impatient Gardener. To learn more about Erin’s other Better Boxwood projects, read on here.