Wow, you work fast. Next, you come to my house, with your husband, and help me dig out Asian jasmine. lol

I'm curious why you would plant more boxwood if the ones you pulled up got too big. The arborvitae looks like a good choice and if you want some color, you could add some salvia greggii. There is one with pink flowers that would look great with your brick.

btw, that was me posting with my original aquiltmom houzz i.d. I guess I should just switch over to it full time since that's where my ideabooks are, but I everyone on the forums knows me as marti.

Sandra, I think that you'll need to be vigilant about nipping the sucker growth from boxwoods. They'll probably run out of energy if you keep them nipped back.

Where will the new shrubs go? There doesn't look as if there will be space for them.

I hope you meant Sandra. I don't want any boxwoods.

Sorry Marti, I got confused about which was your original houzz id :-)

I thought that this was your house and that you were Sandra, oops.
I know that you told me your name, but I've slept since then.
I'll edit my post :-)

Well I know my dad was able to control monkey grass in a certain spot and I managed to control a little bit of passion vine last year (no visible growths this year), both by pulling out any new starts or plants, so definitely with boxwood, it would be very possible with vigilant weeding.

For the large ones, if you didn't want them, you could consider sawing them off at ground level and keep any new growth down, or dig a bit of the roots out (not worrying about getting all of them). Like a tree that leaves its roots behind, the shrub's roots would eventually decay away if it doesn't get any new leafy growth to feed it.

An alternative is that, before digging them up, you could see if anyone local to you wants them. If they do, they would usually make the effort of doing the digging.

Sorry, I missed that your question was what to do about the roots, not what to do with the bed.

I'm going to guess that the old boxwoods will not come back. We had to have work done and the workmen pulled out two old boxwoods and they weren't careful about getting them out. The roots they left never grew into anything. I replanted the old boxwoods and it took a couple of years for them to recover.

If you have any concerns that they might grow back, you might be able to smother them by placing cardboard covered with mulch or potting soil around your new plantings. Works for weeds, I don't know about shrub roots.

Thanks to all for the replies. I've dug up all in the picture except the back row of bushes. Wish I knew the name. Anyway... pulled overgrown boxwood because we cut them completely down wanting them to regrow. We were then told it would take awhile for them to recover so we decided to start over with new shrubs. I spent a day pulling many many MANY sucker roots. I'm hoping I've got the majority of them. Trying to figure out things as I go. Reading BEFORE working after the "shredding of the shrubs". Thanks again.

BTW - Does anyone know the name of the this? It blooms little white flowers and is taller. This is a google pic. Saw them today and they were blooming.