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Boxwood: The Enduring Garden Classic That Keeps Reinventing Itself

Few garden plants boast a pedigree quite like boxwood. Brought to American shores from Amsterdam in the mid-1600s, this evergreen shrub (Buxus spp.) has been a staple of the landscape for over 350 years. The American Boxwood Society calls it the oldest garden ornamental in the country, yet it never feels dated. Ubiquitous, traditional, formal—yes. Boring? Hardly.

Landscape architect Katharine Webster notes that boxwood’s staying power comes down to its remarkable versatility. “It’s a fairly slow-growing evergreen with over 200 varieties,” she says. “Early settlers valued it for supposed medicinal properties, while woodworkers prized its dense, hardy timber.” The shrub surged in popularity during the early 19th century and again in the early 20th, when Victorians planted it extensively around bedding displays—a practice echoed in this suburban Chicago parterre by Doering Landscape Company, where clipped boxwood frames orderly rows of annuals and a fruit tree.

But boxwood isn’t limited to rigid geometry. Harold Leidner Landscape Architects demonstrates its sinuous side in a Dallas garden, where Wintergreen boxwoods planted shoulder-to-shoulder form a flowing ribbon around an American elm. Leidner notes that laying out such curves on paper first, then imprinting the design on the soil, is essential. Maintenance, too, demands finesse. Webster insists on hand-trimming: “Electric shears are too rough; they shred the leaves and blunt new growth.” The immaculate squares in this Agricultural Services installation hint at the patience required.

Variety selection makes all the difference. Leidner recommends Wintergreen or Winter Gem for low, clipped hedges, and Green Velvet for naturally rounded globes or formally sheared spheres. Gretchen Johnson chose the latter for her Oregon garden, pairing the globular shrubs with a reclaimed-brick path that complements her English-style home. “The boxwood gives year-round structure that’s simply pleasing,” she says.

Webster likens boxwood to a navy blazer—it goes with everything. In a Joanne Alderson Design garden, it frames exuberant lavender and bay trees; in a Stephen W. Hackney landscape, it anchors sculptural elements like a supportive “big brother.” Yet it also has a wilder side. Modern designs increasingly let boxwood grow loose and bushy, creating strong borders or soft backgrounds, as seen in this Midwest Block & Brick project. On a New York City roof garden by Amber Freda NYC Garden Design, it even stands alone in containers, proving its adaptability knows no bounds.