A blog about my garden renovation and random garden thoughts

The hardest thing about planting boxwood is getting them straight.  What a pain!  It took me 3 days to plant my 225 boxwood.  Most of that time was spent  aligning the bricks and shrubs and moving the existing plants.

I used a string line to first make sure the bricks were straight.  The boxwood were planted 6 inches from the edge of the bricks and 12 inches apart.  I originally planned 16 inch spacing, but frankly, spacing them a foot apart just made it a easier.

The plan called for boxwood to edge each of the main 4 flower borders in the back yard.  The image below highlights the specific area on the garden plan.

Section of garden plan highlighting where boxwoods will be installed

This image shows the final results.  They’re still small.  You need to use your imagination to see how they’ll look in a couple years.  They’ll end up looking like the boxwood around the circular bed in the middle of the picture.

Image showing boxwood after installation

A string line was used to make sure the bricks and boxwood were straight.  Setting the string line is one of the most important tasks when planting formal flower beds.  If the boxwood aren’t aligned, they are going to look terrible.

String line used to align boxwood and bricks

The other time consuming task was clearing the edges of the borders.  I had to move a lot of existing flowers to make room for the boxwood.  I also got to strip a lot of sod.  Definitely my least favorite job.  It turns out the bricks moved a lot over the winter.  Once the string line was put up, I laughed at how screwed up the border lines were.  Placing brick on the ground without mortar is a stupid idea.  Enough said.

Susan clearing sod to make space for boxwood

Clearing sod from the edges of the flower border

I’m happy with the results.  The boxwood will look great when they grow up.

Image showing flower beds after boxwood installed

Tagged as: boxwood, Garden Design, garden structure

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