The Evergreen Boxwood Alternative That Thrives In Sunny Backyards

Boxwood has been a popular plant in formal garden settings for many centuries, used as hedging or to create topiaries by gardeners who excel in this special craft. It has always been regarded as the perfect solution for defining different outdoor spaces. That is, until the dreaded boxwood blight disease entered the United States more than a decade ago. The telltale signs that your tree has boxwood blight include brown spots on the leaves, defoliation, and stem lesions. To date, there's no cure for this disease, which is why you might want to explore some good evergreen boxwood alternatives instead. An excellent specimen released by Proven Winners is the Waxwing Lime mirror bush (Coprosma repens).

Mirror bush plants originally hail from New Zealand, and Proven Winners have excelled in their breeding of this beautiful hybrid that will grow happily in your sunny backyard. The plant has small glossy variegated leaves with a slight curl, which are lime green in the center with dark red to purple margins. As a fairly small shrub, this plant can reach a maximum height of 30 inches with a spread of 3 feet, making it perfect for low hedges and garden borders. It can be grown in USDA hardiness zones 9 through 11 but could also be enjoyed as a houseplant in colder regions. Like its cousins, Waxwing Gold and Waxwing Orange, this shrub features densely branched growth, making it ideal for pruning and shaping into a compact hedge or topiary-type feature plant in your garden.

Though it will prefer a sunny spot in your yard, this plant can also handle being grown in part shade. Ideally, it likes a minimum of four to six hours of sunlight daily. Waxwing Lime doesn't have any particular soil preference and only needs an average amount of water. Being particularly easy to maintain, you have the choice of either letting it grow into a tidy shrub or keeping it nicely manicured. Unlike boxwood, Waxwing Lime is heat-tolerant, but like boxwood, it's also deer-resistant. In fact, this shrub would make the perfect low-growing hedge that will transform your small backyard space.

As an alternative to boxwood, this plant can be used in similar ways, and you won't have to worry about disease getting into it and spoiling your lovely hedges or border plantings. You can mass-plant Waxwing Lime to create attractive hedged borders along your flower beds or beside the paths in your yard. If you keep it pruned quite low, it can also make a nice ground cover around other taller shrubs in large garden beds. The colorful and glossy leaves will add a little brightness to areas planted with deciduous varieties. So, if you've ever dreamed of having those impressive formal hedges around your backyard that are reminiscent of old English manor home gardens but were reluctant to use boxwood, now you have an outstanding alternative you can grow instead. As a bonus, these evergreen shrubs can make your landscaping look great all year.