What could we do with these box plants?

josusa47

The park where I'm a volunteer gardener has been given eight pot-grown box plants, grown from cuttings by friends of mine.  They are in good condition, dense and bushy and about a foot tall.  We'd like to make a feature of them rather than just poke them randomly into gaps in the borders, but we are a bit short of inspiration.  The soil is clay and pH about 7-8.  Ideas, please.

Lizzie27

Why don't you plant them up in a grid pattern and gradually train them into box balls - looks very structural especially in the winter. You'd have to leave enough room around each plant for them to grow into a ball shape. Monty Don did a similar design in a courtyard part of his garden.  Alternatively, you could plant them into pots and do the training out of sight, they do grow quicker than you would think, especially if well fed and kept watered.  If you went for the planting into the ground option, you could also try separating each plant by a line of bricks, laid flat in a geometric pattern around them.

Blue Onion

A topiary creature?  A whale among the sea of flowers?

hogweed

Put them each at the end of a path and train them into conical shapes. 

Lizzie27

Good ideas Blueonion and hogweed. Reminded me I've got a toparised dragon (!) at the bottom of my rockery which needs an urgent haircut. It was originally a lonicera nitida bush whose roots were right under the rocks so I couldn't dig it up or kill it. My grandson calls it his dragon and now helps me to clip it.