Today’s Garden Ideas

The Evergreen Garden or Conifer Garden as it is also known is an easy and effective way to beautify a rather plain landscaped area. These evergreen plants thrive in just about any hardiness zone and in all types of sunlight. In addition, most of them have low water requirements and are generally low maintenance in regards to pruning and general care.

Gardeners today have a large choice of conifer cone-bearing trees, and non cone-bearing evergreen shrubs both large and dwarf . These plants look beautiful throughout the year giving your garden both interesting texture and color. In addition new growth on the evergreen shrubs can be of a different color from the old growth spicing up your garden even more.

Choosing Your Plants

When designing your evergreen garden be sure to choose evergreen plants that will grow best in your zone. Conifer trees, shrubs, and other evergreen plants can grow as tall as the tallest tree yet be tiny enough to be called ground cover. Use evergreen plants of different heights to ensure a good balance in your evergreen garden.

Planning Your Evergreen Garden

Plant your conifer garden by spreading your evergreen shrubs and plants throughout your conifer bed. Leave plenty of room between your evergreen plants for some splashes of color in the form of brightly flowered annuals and perennials. The evergreen trees and evergreen shrubs form a nice deep green background for these colorful flowers.

If you want to begin your evergreen garden with some of the taller conifer trees start with Eastern White Pine. Blue-green needles grow in a pyramidal shape up to 80 feet tall. Another of the big guys is the Frasier Fir with foliage green on top and silver underneath. This tree can grow up to 60 feet tall.

If your garden cannot quite handle these behemoth conifer trees the mid-size group of evergreens might be appropriate. The Chinese Juniper has dark aromatic green needles and grows up to 15 feet.

Or for a milder climate the Strawberry Tree with its green leaves, white blooms and red fruit can be a nice edition to any evergreen garden. It grows to a maximum height of 35 feet.

Moving down the scale the shorter evergreen shrubs include the 2-foot Norway Spruce with yellow-green foliage. The False Cypress grows to 11/2 feet and has blue green needles and makes a nice contrast to yellow or white annuals or perennials.

The evergreen groundcovers grow up to a maximum of 20 inches like the Siberian Carpet Grass that turns bronze in winter. And there is the old faithful Pachysandra. A fast growing ground cover, this evergreen plant with its leathery oval leaves, only grows up to 8 inches tall.

By making use of many of the different evergreen plants available today you can have an evergreen garden full of wonderful texture and colors. And these gardens are doubly pleasing because they flourish with minimal water and maintenance.

PLANTS FOR AN EVERGREEN DESIGN
TYPE	PLANT	DESCRIPTION
	Chinese Juniper ‘Stricta’	H: to 15ft., S: 3ft; conical conifer with soft, blue-green, aromatic foliage; prune to control growth; zones 5-8
	Scarlet Sage ‘Blaze of Fire’	H and S: 12in; green foliage and bright red flower spikes from summer to early fall; annual; all zones
	French Marigold	H and S: 1ft; orange or gold flowers from summer until frost; annual; all zones
	Floss Flower ‘Pinkie’	H and S: 8in; mat-forming habit; small, green foliage; warm pink flowers from summer to fall; annual; all zones
	Chinese Thuja ‘Aurea Nana’	H and S: 2ft; conical conifer; gold-green foliage turns bronze in winter; zones 6-9
	Pfitzer Juniper ‘Pfitzeriana Glauca’	H: 5-6ft, S: 10ft; blue-gray foliage; scaly, peeling bark; prune to control growth; zones 4-9
	Single-Seed Juniper ‘Blue Star’	H: 20in., S: 24in; dense, evergreen shrub with blue-green, aromatic foliage; zones 5-8