Garden Planning

Laura Boissonnault’s cottage garden is a lush New Jersey oasis that serves as a canvas for creativity as she explores new and exciting plants. Chronicling her gardening journey at “How’s It Growing?,” every season, master gardener Laura shows how charm and structure meld in perfect harmony in the landscape. At the core of Laura's garden design are boxwoods, which lend both form and elegance to her cottage-style landscape. Lining pathways, serving as container accents, and providing living boundaries, Laura’s boxwoods have become a central feature of her landscape. But when her legacy boxwoods were threatened, she turned to Better Boxwood®...

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....