Garden Planning

Boxwood border in a formal garden

How to Use Boxwood in Formal Garden Designs 

From simple symmetry to rigid geometry, Better Boxwoods deliver formal elegance in all its styles.   Boxwood shrubs form the backbone of formal gardens, their evergreen foliage serving as a unifying element that ties the landscape together. Boxwood plants are well suited to creating the strong lines, elegant symmetry, and bold geometry characteristic of formal designs. They lend themselves to being sculpted into topiary or clipped into hedges, and they provide lasting color in containers. The repetition of boxwoods through a formal garden creates a sense of simplicity and harmony, while the diversity of cultivars available provides variation in form,...

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Young Better Boxwood shrubs adding evergreen structure beside a paver patio

How to Use Boxwood in Informal Gardens

How to Use Boxwood in Informal Gardens  While many of us associate boxwoods with formal gardens and topiary, these versatile shrubs are equally at home in less formal settings. In fact, there are endless ways to use boxwoods in naturalistic and informal garden designs. Boxwood shrubs provide much-needed structure and winter color to even the most free-ranging perennial plantings and cottage gardens. They make lovely accents, even without fussy pruning and shaping, and are perfect for marking transitions in the landscape. Boxwoods are tough plants, making an excellent selection for year-round containers. Boxwoods are popular landscape plants for good reason....

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Rows of Better Boxwood shrubs growing in nursery containers at sunset.

The History of Better Boxwood

For generations, boxwoods have been a familiar part of American gardens, lining walkways, framing entrances, and giving landscapes structure through every season. Many of those plantings have taken years to grow into the hedges we see today. When boxwood blight began damaging them, gardeners faced a difficult choice: how could they replace a beloved shrub without losing the look that made them so useful in the first place? That question is at the heart of Better Boxwood®. The collection was developed to offer the familiar form of boxwood with improved resistance to the disease threatening it. Where the Better Boxwood...

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Are Better Boxwood Shrubs Deer Resistant?

Deer can be charming from a distance, but not when they’re feeding in your landscape. A few visits can damage tender plants, disrupt carefully planned garden beds, and leave your outdoor space looking uneven or unfinished. While no plant is completely deer-proof, Better Boxwood® offers a smart combination of deer-resistant foliage, strong resistance to boxwood blight, and dependable year-round structure. For homeowners, landscapers, and designers, that means Better Boxwood can help create plantings that look polished, perform reliably, and hold their shape through the seasons. Keep reading to learn why Better Boxwood shrubs are a strong choice for deer-prone landscapes...

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