This Petite Boxwood Planter is a Low Height, High Style Design
There’s an old saying that goes: “Good things come in small packages.” Well, in the garden world, sometimes great things come in small planters! In this striking short container combo designed by Steph Green of Contained Creations, a small but mighty Better Boxwood® Heritage™ proves that even the shortest planter in a trio can be the star of the show with the right structure and styling.
While Heritage™ is one of the taller varieties in the Better Boxwood collection - maturing to about four feet tall in the landscape - using a newly purchased two-gallon plant in a seasonal container lets you take advantage of its youthful size. In these early months, the boxwood is a dense, compact mound of glossy green foliage that feels perfectly scaled for a low planter. And once its stint as a seasonal planter addition winds to a close, it’s ready to be planted in the landscape where Heritage™ will flourish and mature to its full size.
Using a low, footed bowl, Steph planted the Better Boxwood container combo “in the round,” placing Heritage™ as the tallest element in the center and allowing white calibrachoa and needlepoint ivy to fill and spill around it. Her alternating pattern is both balanced and practical: low containers like this are viewed not only from the front or side, but from above as well. Planting in the round ensures the design looks terrific from every angle.
Design Like the Pros With This Top Tip: Whether you’re designing one container to stand alone or a cute cluster of pots like this one, repetition is the key to achieving that lush, magazine-cover-ready polish. This trio of planters uses repetition in both color and plant type to create a sense of cohesion and style. White double calibrachoa in the lower planter echoes the white euphorbia, dipladenia, and White Wedding® Hydrangea featured in the taller planter on the left. Meanwhile, the Heritage™ boxwood planted in the short container nods to a taller, more mature pyramidal boxwood anchoring the planter on the right.
Together, the three containers incorporate an impressive eight different plant species. Yet thanks to these thoughtful repetitions of color, form, and structure, the collection feels polished, pretty, and ready to perform month after month. And in center stage, the dynamic Better Boxwood® Heritage™ design showcases how your shrubs can shine even in their earliest years, delivering low height with undeniably high style before eventually moving from container designs to the landscape.
Find more of Steph’s inspiring container designs, downloadable plans, and educational content at Containedcreations.com or on social media at instagram.com/contained_creations