summertime Story series

celebrating 20 years of boxerwood

How Boxerwood Got Its Name

Dear friend, whether you are eighty or eight, or somewhere in between, we’re going to tell you how Boxerwood came to be. And we’re going to tell you in the way we tell 3rd graders, pitched as they are between...

A Native Tree Comes Home

This week, a story about dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), a species that vanished from this part of the world, was found growing in a secluded valley on the other side of the earth millions of...

The Frog Princes

So, we say to the 3rd grader: what can we do to help the frogs? Usually we work in small teams to plant grass on the eroded hill.  But sometimes—as in this story—we become engineers: we build stick palisades...

Bottlebrush for pollinators

Bottlebrush buckeye is not common in American gardens, but it is a very popular ornamental plant in Great Britain (and was even awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit). In the wild, it...

The Eye

From the outside, it looks like another one of those mysterious Boxerwood brambly places: dark, tangly, inscrutable. But observing the Eye from the outside is not how to see it. The Eye is best apprehended...

Atlas cedar

Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) is native to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and Algeria, yet it also thrives here at Boxerwood. Also of note, ancient Egyptians used oils extracted from Atlas cedar wood for...

Paper Vultures

A bunch of buzzards rising on thermals is not a flock, but a kettle. When they hang out together in a tree, that’s a committee. When they partake, that’s a wake. These are some of the fun facts you forgot to...

katsura

Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) is a tree now listed as endangered in its native range, due to habitat loss, although it is a rather popular landscape tree in many parts of the world. In Asia, katsura...

Down in the River

All our streams and rivers in Rockbridge find their way to the James, and then the Bay. As denizens of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, it’s our job to take care of our waterways, we teach the kids, and the land...

Meanwhile, We Are Here

Dr. Munger delivered a lot of babies in those days. It was, after all, the booming sixties. And also, simultaneously, he planted a lot of trees. If you think about it, both babies and tree bundles probably set...