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. They adapt to sun or shade, dry or moist conditions, and acidic or alkaline soil. They tolerate deer and rabbit browsing and bring lasting color to the garden. With resistance to insect and disease pests, the Better Boxwood collection takes the resiliency of boxwoods to a new level. Here are a few ways to put the versatile Better Boxwood collection to work in your garden.
Let Boxwood’s Natural Form Shine
One reason boxwoods often have such a formal appearance is the rigorous pruning many plants undergo. To give boxwoods a more natural look, throw away the shears and prune by thinning instead. With thinning, select branches are removed to increase light penetration and airflow to interior branches, which promotes healthier growth and a dense, full canopy. Thinning can also be used to keep plants at a desired size. Boxwoods maintained by thinning rather than shearing have a softer, more natural appearance. On the other hand, a whimsical, highly stylized topiary can look right at home in a playful cottage garden. It’s all in the context.
Plant Resilient Boxwood Backdrops and Borders
Boxwood shrubs create a lush backdrop to perennial beds and landscape borders. They also provide the evergreen color so desired in foundation plantings. When left to grow in their natural form, boxwood shrubs like Babylon Beauty™ take on a looser, more open habit. This allows them to bring texture and structure to a garden without impacting the overall aesthetic of the planting. Another way to give boxwoods a more informal appearance is to plant them in staggered rows rather than straight lines.
Use Boxwoods to Define Garden Rooms
Give the rooms in your garden definition by planting living “walls” between one space and the next. Separating the landscape into distinct functional areas creates a sense of intimacy. Space-making also makes small landscapes feel larger. The height of your walls will determine how enclosed a space feels. For complete privacy, Skylight™ boxwood creates a dense screen, even in tight spots. For a garden wall, you can see over, Heritage™ boxwood grows quite compactly, making a wonderful low-maintenance planting that needs only occasional thinning. You do not need a solid wall or hedge to separate one space from the next. Experiment with staggered plantings as well as the space between plants as you define garden rooms.
Add Structure to Annual and Perennial Plantings
Cottage gardens and perennial borders benefit from the addition of woody shrubs to provide structure, especially during the winter months. Evergreen bushes like boxwood are ideal for this purpose, as they provide year-round interest. The compact Renaissance™ boxwood works well toward the front of plantings where it breaks up masses of flowering annuals or perennials and provides a resting point for the eye. The larger growing Heritage™ boxwood provides similar functions at the middle and back of planting beds. When planted singly, the upright form of Skylight™ boxwood makes a lovely accent in any garden.
Create Harmony through Repetition
Repeating boxwood plants throughout the garden creates a sense of rhythm and connectivity. Individual plants may serve unique functions throughout the garden while still contributing to the whole. The compact form of Heritage™ boxwood, for example, might mark a transition from one garden room to another or soften a corner. Other varieties may serve as accents or backdrops. Even when different varieties and forms are used, the color and texture of repeated plant material provide a thread that unites distant parts of the landscape. Likewise, boxwood plants grown in containers carry that connection to patios, porches, and walkways.
Plant Boxwood Shrubs En Masse
Planting en masse is a simple design technique used to maintain balance in the landscape and create impactful plantings. When working in large planting beds, setting shrubs in large masses works to balance the visual weight or size of the planting with its surroundings. Planting en masses allows us to create pleasing combinations of color and texture, even over large areas, without making the planting look too busy. Mass plantings are another way of bringing harmony and cohesion to the landscape. With its low spreading growth, Babylon Beauty™ is an excellent boxwood variety for planting en masse.
Boxwood plants are endlessly adaptable and provide lasting structure and color in any garden setting. With disease resistance and stylish forms, the plants in the Better Boxwood collection provide low-maintenance solutions for natural borders and hedges, stylish accents, and simple container plantings for formal and informal gardens alike.