Email  Print  del.icio.us  digg  yahoo!  Feed

Subscribe to Midwest Home : Web Section MH

Ever-Versatile Evergreens

There’s more to conifers than year-round color

Wy do a gardener’s thoughts turn to conifers at this time of year? Simple. Their subtle presence—in shades of greens, golds, and smoky blues—recedes into the background when gaudy summer show-offs fill gardens with color. When the leaves of deciduous trees and shrubs begin to die and dangle pitifully from bare branches, conifers come into their own.

Conifers are evergreens. I didn’t know that until I started gardening seriously, and even then it took me a few years to get my terms straight. That’s because the delineations among varieties can be confusing to the uninitiated (or the initiated, for that matter). To wit: If conifers are evergreens, then why isn’t boxwood (which stays green in the winter) a conifer? Because a boxwood is a woody shrub. But don’t woody shrubs lose their leaves in winter? Not unless they’re deciduous shrubs. Other leafy evergreens are rhododendrons and azaleas. Likewise, boxwood has leaves for foliage, while a conifer has needles.

Yes, needles are also foliage. And some needles are flat and not really needle-like. Witness the foliage of an arborvitae. I dare you to find me an evergreen that grows pine cones, though. Only conifers have those.

Now that you know what a conifer is (and isn’t), we can get to the fun stuff: which ones to buy. As a garden plant, nothing can beat the dwarf globe blue spruce (Picea pungens ‘Glauca Globosa’) as an anchor plant that instantly calms the most cluttered garden. Not only does every color and texture complement this conifer, but its tidy round shape makes any gardener look like a neatnik. Place three of these at regular intervals along a border and you’ll create harmony where chaos once reigned.

If you like the soft-needled look of an Alberta spruce (Picea glauca ‘Alberta’), you’ll love soft-needled pines of all types. A collection of dwarfs is always delightful. I just planted a conifer garden on a northeast corner outside my garden fence—not an ideal location because they’ll get full sun and my hose just barely makes it that far—but the fence should block westerly winds. Plus, the innermost part of my conifer garden is occupied by the most tender plants, and the garden is ringed along the perimeter by tough-as-nails creeping junipers, which will eventually drape over a new dry stone wall.

Nothing beats junipers for draping over a wall. These indispensable creepers come in golds, greens, and blues. ‘Prince of Wales’, a green variety, is charmingly gnarled but slow growing and not quite as drought-tolerant as more common blue rug types. J. horizontalis ‘Mother Lode’ is a yellow-gold creeper (a sort of the iconic ‘Wiltonii’). Discovered in 1985 at Iseli Nursery (www.iseli-nursery.com), the famed Oregon conifer grower, it grows up to 4 feet across. I lost one to heat and drought, but recently planted two more in my new conifer garden. I hope I’ve learned from my mistakes (keep the thing watered until it’s established, especially if it’s in full sun, and break apart the roots so they don’t girdle). There’s nothing prettier hanging over a wall, unless it’s that good old sun worshipper J. horizontalis ‘Wiltonii’.

I’ve been delighted with a newish spreading juniper called Juniperus chinensis ‘Daub’s Frosted’. It has feathery blue-green interior foliage with chartreuse highlights and golden tips. A bit taller than the creeping junipers, ‘Daub’s Frosted’ will spread to between 3 to 5 feet across. And yes, it really does look frosted.

In the same color range is the popular golden false cypress, Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Golden Mop’. False cypress has a vaguely weeping habit. Golden false cypress is the eye-catching newcomer. The dwarf in my garden is also the toughest plant I own. It takes pounding sun, requires surprisingly little water, and must have only one thing: good drainage. It has grown from a twig to a significant 5-cubic-foot thug (in a good way) in just four years.

My favorite soft-needled pine—Pinus flexilis—is small at the moment, but it won’t be for long: It grows at a rate of up to 18 inches per year. I paid handsomely for my 6-foot Pinus flexilis ‘Vandewolf’s Pyramid’ with blue-green needles that is distinctly non-pyramidal but more Dr. Seuss-like in shape. I’m told it can be pruned to whatever shape I like. I’m hoping that doesn’t mean professionally pruned.

I have nothing against large conifers. In fact, my affinity for them is about to make big problems in my small yard. A Canadian hemlock is the tree in question. I fell for one in a nursery lot 10 years ago. The tree was in a pot, standing 4 feet tall at most, its elegant branches drooping ever so slightly as hemlocks do. Pathos is the word for it. I had to have one. For a few weeks I thought for sure it was dying. Too much shade? Too little? Water? What?

This summer I planted three more along a fence and began the same agonizing deathwatch as the tops of the trees did those deep backbends I remembered from last time. The good news is that my first victim is still doing them. Now a magnificent 20-foot specimen, it looks just as melancholy (in a good way) as ever.

Finally, allow me to boggle your mind by mentioning the glaring exception to my rule that conifers are evergreens. I just planted a larch (Larix sibirica). Its light green needles grow horizontally on branches and turn up at the ends. Charming and ladylike until . . . the needles all drop in the first frost. Larches not only drop their needles in winter, they go absolutely bare-naked. Not to worry, they come back brilliant as ever in spring.

Bonnie Blodgett publishes The Garden Letter and is writing a book about smell.

Care of Conifers

Now that everybody knows that a conifer is a tree or shrub with needles and possibly pine cones. I must point out that evergreens lose their foliage. Just not as noticeably or as frequently as woody trees and shrubs. Similar to the way our bodies replace cells, evergreens replace their needles without dramatically altering their appearance. Eastern white pines are on a two-year cycle, while Scots pines turn over every three years and mugo pines every four.

If a conifer turns brown, it is sick (I recently had to remove a dwarf white pine covered with scale) or has suffered sunscald or wind burn. You can usually prevent the latter with proper watering and treatment with an anti-desiccant spray such as Wilt-Pruf and/or a burlap fence. I highly recommend both measures if you want a decent-looking Alberta spruce.

Prune arborvitaes with hedge shears, but never so hard as to remove all the foliage on a branch because it won’t grow back. On the other hand, shear yews to keep them shipshape (branches pruned hard will grow new foliage). Curb the growth of pines by pinching off the candles at the tips of branches. You can saw off the branches of any conifer at the trunk; they will survive the procedure, but the results won’t be particularly pleasing.
—B.B