Bye-bye, boxwoods! On the thrill of getting rid of old plants you hate

When I sit in those pink chairs on my front patio I want some screening from the cars and people passing nearby. That’s why 12 years ago when I moved here I reflectively planted a short boxwood hedge, some of which is visible here on the right. Like most of us, I assumed that only evergreens could provide screening. 

It took years to reach this height – boxwoods are famously slow-growing – and now they seem to be dying from the boxwood blight that’s killing them in at least 10 states so far, including Maryland.

Even if they weren’t showing signs of disease, I was hating the formal look of evergreen hedge in what’s now a cottage-style pollinator garden. I’d gotten rid of the arborvitae hedge I so hated and I was starting to contemplate, and then eagerly anticipate getting rid of the boxwoods, as soon as possible.

I don’t have an undergardener to do the heavy digging and lifting for me, so I contacted my handyman. But while waiting for him to fit this job into his schedule, my impatience grew daily. Can you relate?

So I decided to try digging them up myself, starting by watering them deeply for a few days. 

Finally ready to give it my senior-citizen best, I first removed all the stems (left photo), then inserted my trusty shovel and discovered that the roots on these 12-year-old shrubs weren’t so impressive after all.  I sliced around the entire root ball and unearthed these babies in no time!  I felt victorious.

A friend pointed out that I had my decades of gardening to thank for knowing how to dig up an old shrub.  Sounds right.

Flowering shrubs for screening? You bet!

But what to replace them with? I happened to have an extra ‘Ogon’ Spirea that I’d recently moved from one of my adopted gardens to another, so without shame I retrieved it and planted it where I needed screening.  Yes, it’s not evergreen but it has all the advantages of regular Spireas (especially their extreme drought-tolerance), and this particular cultivar has leaves 10 months of the year.  It literally keeps its leaves until Christmas week and leafs out again in February; when it’s leafless I’m not sitting on the patio, anyway.

Also, like most and maybe all flowering shrubs, they grow a lot faster than evergreens, both conifers and broad-leaf types.

Finally, flowering shrubs can be pruned – to keep them away from my sidewalk, for example – without ruining the shape.

Here’s the “before” view from the front door, showing how the boxwoods were blocking my view of the perennial bed behind them.  Ditto the view from my kitchen window.

Even immediately after taking out the shrubs, I enjoyed seeing more of the Joe Pye Weeds and wood asters (not yet blooming in this photo).  Next season they’ll fill in some of the empty space and I’ll move the tall bronze fennel to the left to open up the view even more.  You know, the tweaking that never stops with perennial borders – not that I’d want it to.