Swane’s Golden Italian Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens “Swane’s Golden”)
All the conifers I’m showing you today only grow 10-30 feet tall. This particular form of the popular Italian Cypress originated in the Swane Brother’s nursery in Australia in 1946. Since then it’s become very useful as a gold colored accent tree. It grows at a moderate rate up to 30 feet tall, and stays narrow, so it will fit in tight spaces where the height is not a problem. It stays this lovely golden color all year but may be slightly more colorful in summer, as many colored conifers are.
Blue Pfitzer Juniper (Juniperus chinensis “Pfitzeriana glauca”)
This is one of the most frequently planted junipers there is. It grows 10 to 12 feet tall and spreads much wider if allowed to. We keep ours from getting that wide or it would block our whole driveway! I prune it back once or twice every year to keep it in bounds. It grows with this wonderful 45 degree arching habit that makes it look pretty wild, and it is. It’s a very vigorous and fast growing plant with a lovely blue color to it that contrasts nicely with the green ones surrounding it.
Dwarf Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum “Peve Minaret”)
This is one of my “pettable’ trees, due to its incredibly soft foliage. It’s a unique tree – a deciduous conifer that loses all its leaves in fall after they turn a striking orange-brown. It will supposedly grow to 20 feet or more. Ours is already 13 1/2 feet tall after about 9 years in our garden. It’s gotten way wider that I expected – probably over 12 feet at this point. The species grows in swampy areas in the SE part of the US, and puts on “knees”, or above ground roots, to help hold them up. Ours has a couple of small raised bumps, but they’re not really knees. Not yet anyway.
Blue Arrow Juniper (Juniperus scopulorum “Blue Arrow”)
This is one of the skinniest junipers, or trees of any sort, you can find. They grow 20-25 feet tall but only 2-3 feet wide. It’s considered an improved form of the popular Skyrocket juniper which is also narrow, but gets a bit wider and taller. These are also much bluer, which is a nice contrast to the surrounding plantings. They’ll be a nice screen to give us more privacy.
Van den Akker Alaska Cedar (Cupressus nootkatensis “Van den Akker”)
Another very narrow tree that might even be skinner than the Blue Arrows. It grows up to 25 or 30 feet tall but barely a foot or more wide, tho it throws out side branches that are wider from time to time. I know it’s a bit hard to see here because it’s surrounded by so many other plants. I expect it to tower over the others in time but now it’s sort of hiding behind them.
Beanpole Hybrid Yew (Taxus x media “Beanpole”)
This is cross between the English and Japanese yews. It combines the utility of the English yews with the greater hardiness of the Japanese species. It will eventually grow 10 or 12 feet tall but will stay very narrow (do you sense a theme here?…). It will only get a foot or two wide. It’s poisonous in all its parts, especially the bright red berries it has on it now in September. It’s growing quite fast – well over a foot a year. It’s a lovely dark green accent for our path of conifers along the garden.
Spann’s Slow Column Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris “Spaan’s Slow Column”)
Scots pine has so many cultivars! We have two very different ones in our small garden. This one will stay very narrow and will only get 15 or 20 feet tall, if even that. It grows very slowly so it’ll take it awhile to get that tall, but it puts on small cones even at this young age, which is very cool. I like the blueish color of the needles. Another skinny accent along the garden.
Golden Spire Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata “Daniellow”)
This is a beautiful golden form of our native Western Red Cedar – the tree that’s probably most symbolic of the Pacific Northwest. The species is used by the indigenous people here to make just about everything they need – from longhouses to canoes, to clothing and hats, to ceremonial uses and even medicines. This golden form stays this brilliant color all year long, but is brighter in the full sun it’s growing in and in the summer. Another narrow tree, it will grow to 20 or 30 feet tall but only 3 or 4 feet wide. The golden color is a beautiful accent among the green of the other conifers here.
Skyrocket juniper (Juniperus scopulorum “Skyrocket”)
I alluded to this tree earlier when I was talking about the Blue Arrows. This is the original skinny juniper that was supposed to be the skinniest of them all, until the Blue Arrows came along that is. This one is wider and taller than the Blue Arrows and grows a bit faster from my observation. It’s a nice gray-green that sort of melds into the surrounding area and provides a nice vertical accent by the gate here. So far it’s thin enough that it doesn’t block the gate, and I hope it stays that way!
Oregon Green Austrian Black Pine (Pinus nigra “Oregon Green”)
I know it’s a bit confusing to call this a green pine, that is also a black pine, but that’s the way they named it. It was “discovered” in a nursery in Oregon which accounts for the Oregon part, and of course it’s green, so I guess that’s why. I’d have focused on the extremely white candles you see here in spring. They open up to stiffly persistent needles that stay on the tree for years. It has many cones which fall and line the front walk. I love walking by it on the fallen needles and cones.
Diana Contorted Japanese Larch (Larix kaempferi “Diana”)
They say this tree will max out around 30 feet, but I suspect it may get even taller. l’ve never seen a large one, only photos, so we’ll just have to wait and see. It’s about 20 feet tall now, after 5 years growing here – once putting on 4 1/2 feet in one year! It doesn’t have that far to go to get there. It’s another deciduous conifer that loses all its needles after they turn a brilliant golden orange color in the fall. It doesn’t provide much shade yet but it’s still a wonderful tree overhanging the small deck in the back of the garden. The branches all twist and twirl around themselves, thus the contorted part in the name.
Black Dragon Japanese Cedar/Sugi (Cryptomeria japonica “Black Dragon”)
This is one of the hundreds of cultivars of this tree, of which we have several. It’s the national tree of Japan. We call it Japanese Cedar but, they call it Sugi. The species and some large cultivars are very important timber trees. The species grows well over a hundred feet tall, and we have one cultivar that gets over 50 feet. But this little one here only grows 10 to 20 feet tall, and it takes it some time to do that. They call it Black Dragon for its dark needles. It’s definitely not one of my “pettable” ones since its needles are very stiff and hard to the touch. It grows fast in youth but it’s slowed down now to only a few inches a year. It won’t get too wide but I’ll still need to prune it to fit in someday as it and the ones next to it grow.
These are the medium sized conifers we have growing here in our little Nature Sanctuary. They fill a need for evergreens that don’t get too wide but still have some height to them. They love the rich, wet, acid soils we have here in our little Greenwood peat bog – perfect for most conifers. As you surely noticed many of these are rather skinny things, which means a lot of them can fit in the garden without taking up too much floor space. Given the small size of our garden this is a very nice feature, and one for which I’ve specifically chosen them. We do have some larger conifers, but I’ll wait to show them to you in a future post. For now I hope you’ve enjoyed this presentation of the various mid-sized conifers we grow here.
Happy Autumn!
Steve
Gardening in Greenwood 