Versailles favours Belgian boxwood
If you’re restoring arguably the most famous gardens in the world or at least in Europe, you might as well do it right and get some quality Belgian boxwood. That’s what the folks at the Gardens of Versailles thought as well.
Hundreds of thousands of boxwood plants of Belgian make will grace the legendary palace gardens, and it’s not just any boxwood. It is a new type, Belgian through and through, and it was chosen for a very important reason.
This new Belgian-developed boxwood is more resistant to fungi and to the box tree moth. The plants were crossed with wild breeds and Asian breeds, as a plant expert from Willaert, the Roeselare-based supplier, has explained to the media.
This new boxwood may cost four times as much, but thanks to its resistance, it does not need to be treated with pesticides, so it’s a far more ecological solution than less resistant breeds.
And so it happens that the beautiful gardens dating back to the reign of the French Sun King, have become a little more beautiful and, yes, a little more Belgian.