LOL, "wonderful" is not how I'd describe it, although I will say that the neighbors like it. But then in a landscape of lawns and tightly clipped unhappy yews, anything else looks exotic and fascinating. I mostly garden in front because major traffic behind my house makes it as loud as the Indy 500. The front is only as loud as an average highway, so that's some improvement! ;) In front I have large beds on either side of the lawn where I grow only things that can survive in the vicinity of Norway maples. Everyone on my street has one, they are street trees that you can't cut down. Horrible things. My neighborhood of small cottagy houses was built in the 1930s and the houses are very close together so nothing I could do would ever hide the streetscape--cars, clipped yews, asphalt, concrete, driveways, the neighbors' kids toys, etc. And my neighbor is the town junkman, so his whole yard is basically a junkheap complete with 2 dead cars. But he's a nice guy, we'd never do anything to hurt him. Anyway, despite these constraints, I have after 10 years got lush summer and fall garden of tough-as-nails plants and containers, and I am happy to have a full-sun southside bed where I can grow tomatoes. To give the tiny front yard some structure, I made a semicircle of brick edging that sweeps across the yard in a big slightly assymmetrical arc, to push the eye toward my more attractive southside garden beds and built a little assymmetric brick path to those beds. When money allows I will put up a picket fence, first on the sides and then maybe across the front. My garden would win no design awards, partly because my plantings are constrained by the Norway maple and partly because it's in an unattractive setting. This is my beef with garden mags and books, they always depict gardens at houses whose yards and surroundings would look nice even if no gardening was done. And I sure do envy your wide open sunny spaces, and the more attractive, non-urban cityscape that you have! What I long for is privacy and quiet, the two things you can't get in an urban setting like this. But I do have a nice little front porch that I fill up with plants and wicker chairs in the summer, and I have tomatoes right at the doorstep, and I have bees and flowers so hey, it's OK.

Analysis paralysis IS more common, with the Internet and with huge number of choices. There was a thing in the paper that just going to get a pair of JEANS (even a guy, not me) brings 100 or more options. Even this forum can instill paralysis--wait wait, back up, big picture--I know I do that. Back to raised bed. Along lines of making it good enough but not overly good (or expensive), and at risk of incurring more paralysis, you might think about whether you are going to use some trellis, tripod poles for veggies, etc and then think, will I have a problem with what will "go" with my proposed box? So you might want to reserve some $$ for some of these raised-bed veggie-supporting accessories of nicer construction or materials, and/or keep the basic bed from getting so "fine" that you can't grow peas. I'm thinking of something that might remain in the bed during the winter and provide "vertical interest" and so might be designed to be inherently attractive as well.

Sounds to me like they are mealy bug. Are they kind of fluffy and slow moving (you might even think they are non-moving)? They love to nestle into cracks and crevices, unlike scale which tend to be more out in the open as a rule. They are actually sucking sap from the buxus so you need to get rid of them. My favourite way to get rid of these suckers is to dab them with a cotton bud soaked in metho. The cotton bud also helps you get into the tight spots. Of course you could use the cotton bud with no metho and just squish them into the next life!

I think you're overlooking a very important issue in the p. glauca example. If "contact with the ground" means only sitting on the ground, the walls of the container will lose heat at a much higher rate than if the pot were sunk into ground to its rim or insulated in some other way. Even a relatively large 5 gallon pot would drop to the -10 temperature pretty quickly with several days of -20 temperatures with highs only in the single numbers or low teens. Such temperatures accompanied by winds accelerates the process. Not too many years ago my area of Maine experienced around 8 days of sub-zero (-10 to -18) temperatures with highs barely reaching +10 and high winds nearly every day. There was no snow cover at all. Code requires water and septic pipes to be 4 feet down, but many people experienced frozen septic lines and water lines. In some cases, these refroze after an initial thawing. Many plants in the ground listed as Z4 hardy were killed outright, hellebores being a notable example. After a few days of this the ground surface temperature was certainly not 10 degrees higher than the air temperature. It was well below 0 at 18" and would have been supplying no heat to the bottom of a container sitting on the ground. One nursery lost a sizable number of Alberta spruces (Z3) even though they were under opaque plastic and microfoam. Those at the center of the pile were damaged but survived. Those on the perimeter were killed. The p. glauca example is really coincidental. Of course you are correct that no plant keels over dead the second the magic root killing temperature is reached. Once it is reached for a sufficient amount of time, however, the plant will die. Hardiness zone is irrelevant.