Saunders Bros. Helps with White House Reno

Jennifer Polanz

In late August, the White House revealed renovations to the aging Rose Garden that included the installation of more than 400 Saunders Brothers boxwood, including 350 NewGen Independence from the Boxwood Blight-resistant NewGen Boxwood Collection and 50 of the large Green Beauty Boxwood.

“The most renowned garden in America was in trouble,” says Bennett Saunders, general manager of Saunders Genetics and co-owner of Saunders Brothers, of the garden, which hasn’t seen much change since the ’60s. “I had seen the problems from TV news coverage in the Rose Garden. An intensive garden like this needs to be renewed every 20 to 25 years. The boxwood were suffering from insect and disease damage. On top of that, they were in danger of attracting Boxwood Blight, an invasive fungal disease that entered the United States in 2011.”

The Saunders team were invited to the White House in June to consult with landscape architect firms and in July helped architect Perry Guillot personally select all the specimen shrubs from the Saunders Brothers farm fields. GP