Garden Planning

Erin Schaanen of the Impatient Gardener with Better Boxwood plants in her Michigan garden

From Blight to Bright: A Real-Life Better Boxwood Transformation

Whether you love lush trees, joyful planters, abundant blooms, or artful hedges, Erin Schanen’s Wisconsin landscape is a garden designer’s dream. A skillful gardener, writer, and content creator whose videos chronicling her gardening journey have educated and inspired millions, Erin is always eager to introduce new plants to her garden - and to the world. However, three years ago, her garden saw the addition of one particularly unwelcome visitor: boxwood blight. Erin first spotted “splotchy” black lesions on the leaves of a boxwood grouping on her property, and a little searching soon uncovered the disease’s telltale black streaks on the...

Read more


Linda Vater sits with her Better Boxwood plants in her Oklahoma City garden

Which Traditional Boxwoods do Better Boxwoods Replace? 

Boxwoods are the cornerstone of gardens across the world, providing structure and evergreen color in formal and informal settings alike. Whether you shape your boxwood into hedges and topiary or use them as an architectural element in perennial beds and borders, you want your boxwood shrubs to stand up to environmental stress and pest pressure. The breeders of the Better Boxwood collection combined improved disease resistance and cold hardiness with handsome plant forms to create boxwood plants that simply perform better in the garden. Here’s a look at how to use these garden heroes in the landscape and which popular...

Read more


Row of Better Boxwood plants in branded pots on retail shelves in a garden center

Get to Know Better Boxwood with plant finder Kip McConnell

If you're a fan of the classic boxwood look, you’re going to love Better Boxwood! This new collection has all the elegance and lush greenery of traditional boxwoods but with a groundbreaking twist. In our latest video, join plant expert Kip McConnell as he shares the exciting story behind Better Boxwood – the first collection of scientifically bred blight-resistant boxwood available in the U.S. Why is Better Boxwood a Big Deal? Boxwoods have been garden cornerstones for centuries, framing gardens and historic estates with their evergreen charm. However, over the past two decades, a disease known as boxwood blight has...

Read more


Better Boxwood containers with boxwood plants in them ready to plant

Boxwood Beauty: Three Great Ideas from a New Jersey Cottage Garden

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®...

Read more