Buxus Heritage - Boxwood

Buxus BetterBuxus® Heritage is a recent hybrid boxwood, close to Buxus sempervirens, but more compact and more resistant to boxwood diseases. Its dense, beautiful dark green foliage weaves elegant hedges and forms well-groomed topiaries with little maintenance. Its dimensions are ideal for framing paths and entrances. Evergreen in winter, elegant and versatile, it thrives in sun or partial shade, in any well-drained soil.

Buxus BetterBuxus/Better Boxwood Heritage (= Buxus ‘HER2010B02’, family Buxaceae) is a hybrid cultivar obtained in Belgium by Didier Hermans (Herplant BVBA) as part of a breeding programme carried out around 2009–2010 to improve resistance to boxwood blight (Calonectria pseudonaviculata). It belongs to the BetterBuxus® series, which includes four complementary hybrids: Renaissance, Heritage, Babylon Beauty and Skylight). The collection has been awarded a professional prize.
Compared to the type species (B. sempervirens), Heritage shows a more bushy, dense, naturally more compact habit, regular symmetry and excellent aptitude for pruning to create low hedges and topiaries.
Evergreen shrub, with slightly winged quadrangular stems, Heritage bears small opposite, simple, obovate, entire, smooth and glossy leaves, dark green in colour at maturity; the young foliage emerges paler at bud burst. Its growth is moderate and regular. In open ground, a mature specimen, about 10 years old, measures between 0.90m and 1.20m in height and 0.60m to 0.90m in width; in a container, it remains more compact depending on the pot volume, care given and frequency of pruning. Hardy down to -25 °C, it requires well-drained soil and tolerates lime. The plant does not sucker.

In a border or as a low hedge, Heritage draws clean lines and brings order to the garden. In a pot, it can be pruned into balls, oval shapes and small cones to mark an entrance. In a classic display, pair it, for example, with laurustinus 'Gwenlian' and the shrubby honeysuckle Lonicera nitida 'Elegant'. You can plant in front of this small evergreen hedge a border of Teucrium chamaedrys ‘Alba'.