An improved heuristic recursive strategy combining with genetic algorithm is presented in this paper. Firstly, this method searches some rectangles, which have the same length or width, to form some layers without waste space, then it uses the heuristic recur sive strategies to calculate the height of the remaining packing order and uses the evolutionary capability of genetic algorithm to reduce the height. The computational results on several classes of benchmark problems have shown that the presented algorithm can compete with known evolutionary heuristics. It performs better especially for large test problems.