Spring flowers are wonderful. Summer gardens can be overflowing with color, and fall foliage may stop us in our tracks. Then winter arrives, revealing which plants are really doing the heavy lifting in the landscape.
That’s when conifers shine.
With their year-round foliage, strong forms, beautiful textures, and surprising range of colors, conifers give a garden structure and personality twelve months of the year. They can provide privacy, frame a view, soften a foundation, anchor a garden bed, create a dramatic focal point, or add a perfectly scaled evergreen accent to a container.
They are also much more diverse than many gardeners realize.
At B.B. Barns, we are especially proud of our conifer selection. We think it’s one of the strongest you’ll find in Western North Carolina, with exceptional plants from Iseli Nursery® along with conifers from other specialty growers. Whether you’re searching for a tiny, slow-growing treasure for a container or a substantial evergreen specimen that will transform a landscape, there is an extraordinary range to explore.
Conifers Are So Much More Than Evergreens
When someone says “conifer,” you might immediately picture a traditional Christmas-tree shape covered in green needles. That’s certainly part of the conifer world, but it barely scratches the surface.
Conifers offer foliage in deep forest green, blue-green, icy blue, silver, chartreuse, brilliant gold, creamy white, and combinations of several colors. Some change color with the seasons.
One particularly memorable example is Pinus contorta ‘Chief Joseph’, or Chief Joseph lodgepole pine (pictured above). Its foliage is green through much of the growing season, then transforms into rich golden yellow as temperatures drop and the days become shorter. Iseli Nursery® describes it as a plant that truly takes center stage during winter, exactly when many other garden plants are at their quietest.
Another standout is Picea glauca ‘Rainbow’s End’®, Rainbow’s End white spruce. Its first flush of spring growth begins light green and matures to dark green, then a second flush appears in summer in a bright creamy golden yellow. It’s a wonderful reminder that “evergreen” does not have to mean “always the same shade of green.”
Gold foliage can be especially effective in Western North Carolina gardens, where deep green forests often form the background. A yellow or chartreuse conifer can practically glow against darker foliage.
Blue conifers have a completely different effect. Their cool tones can make burgundy foliage look richer, soften bright flower colors, and create beautiful combinations with stone, gravel, and contemporary architecture.
Even within the greens, there is enormous variety. Think glossy dark green, soft gray-green, fresh lime, mossy green, or nearly black-green foliage.
Shape Is Part of the Fun
One of the best things about designing with conifers is that you’re not simply choosing a color. You’re choosing a shape.
Conifers can be narrow and columnar, broad and pyramidal, perfectly round, softly mounded, low and spreading, irregular and sculptural, or dramatically weeping.
That makes them tremendously useful in garden design.
A tall, narrow conifer can add height without taking up an enormous amount of ground space. A globe-shaped dwarf conifer can provide a strong visual punctuation mark along a path. A spreading juniper can cover the ground and tumble over a wall. A weeping spruce can become living sculpture.
Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Just Dandy’, or Just Dandy Hinoki cypress (pictured above), is a great example of how much personality can fit into a relatively small plant. This dwarf selection develops into a low, rounded form with dense, finely textured foliage.
Then there are plants such as Cryptomeria japonica, Japanese cedar, which can provide a much larger pyramidal or conical presence in the landscape. Its soft foliage and handsome reddish-brown bark give it a very different character from a spruce or pine. North Carolina Extension notes that Japanese cedar can also be an excellent screening plant and an alternative to Leyland cypress.
From Miniatures to Majestic Specimens
There’s a conifer for almost every scale of garden. Did you know that terms such as “miniature” and “dwarf” generally refer to growth rate, not simply to the plant’s current size? In fact, Iseli Nursery® categorizes miniature conifers as growing less than one inch per year and dwarf conifers as growing approximately one to six inches per year. Intermediate and large-growing conifers put on progressively more annual growth.
That’s helpful information when you’re choosing a plant. A cute little conifer sitting on a nursery table may not stay that size forever, while another may remain compact for decades. That’s why it’s critical to consider the expected garden size, not just the size of the plant when you bring it home.
For gardeners with small courtyards, patios, rock gardens, or detailed foundation plantings, miniature and dwarf conifers can be remarkable design tools. For a large property, taller conifers can create scale, shelter, privacy, and a sense of permanence.
And sometimes one beautiful specimen is all a space needs.
A mature conifer with an interesting silhouette can serve much like a piece of sculpture. Place it where you can see it from an important window, at the end of a garden path, near an entry, or against a simple background that allows its form to stand out.
The Backbone of a Four-Season Garden
Garden designers often talk about the “bones” of a landscape. These are the plants and elements that keep the garden looking intentional even when flowers are gone and deciduous trees have dropped their leaves.
Conifers are exceptionally good at this job.
Imagine a mixed border filled with hydrangeas, ornamental grasses, flowering perennials, and deciduous shrubs. During spring and summer, there may be plenty happening. In January, the composition can look very different.
Now add a few strategically placed evergreen conifers.
Suddenly there are recognizable forms throughout the border. A narrow upright conifer creates height. A rounded dwarf plant provides mass near the front. A blue or gold conifer creates a color focal point. The garden has rhythm and structure even in the middle of winter.
That doesn’t mean filling a landscape entirely with evergreens. Some of the most interesting gardens combine conifers with plants that change dramatically through the seasons. Why? It’s the contrast that makes both groups more beautiful.
Try pairing fine conifer foliage with big-leaved hydrangeas, rhododendrons, or hostas. Contrast a strongly upright conifer with airy ornamental grasses. Let spring bulbs emerge near low evergreen mounds. Plant flowering perennials where their summer color can play against blue, green, or gold needles.
Conifers Can Be Your Go-To For Creating Privacy and Screening
Of course, conifers can be beautiful and practical at the same time.
Privacy screening is one of the most common reasons homeowners look for evergreens. The right conifers can soften views of neighboring properties, screen roads and utility areas, reduce the visual impact of buildings, define outdoor rooms, and create a greener backdrop around patios and gathering spaces.
Thuja ‘Green Giant’, Green Giant arborvitae, is one familiar example, pictured above. North Carolina Extension lists it for use as a screen, hedge, windbreak, or specimen and notes that it grows in North Carolina’s mountain region. (Hello, WNC!) It develops into a large plant, however, so giving it adequate space is essential.
Screening doesn’t always need to mean planting a perfectly straight row of identical trees, either. For a more natural effect, consider layering several types of evergreens with flowering shrubs and smaller trees. Vary their heights and spacing. A mixed screen can feel more like a garden and less like a wall, while still accomplishing the goal of privacy.
The best screening plant depends on the site. Sun exposure, soil drainage, available width and height, deer pressure, existing trees, and the view you want to screen all matter. This is one of those situations where choosing the right plant from the beginning can make an enormous difference.
Conifers Are Wonderful in Containers, Too
You don’t need a large landscape to enjoy conifers; dwarf and miniature selections are outstanding container plants. Unlike a pot filled entirely with annual flowers, a container built around a conifer has an attractive permanent structure. Seasonal plants can come and go around it.
Iseli Nursery® recommends dwarf conifers for containers because of their tremendous variety in form, texture, and color. Depending on the selection, you can choose narrow spires, rounded mounds, spreading forms, weeping plants, or tiny conifers suitable for trough gardens.
Think of the conifer as the anchor. A small upright conifer can become the “thriller” in a container, surrounded by seasonal flowers and trailing plants. A rounded Hinoki cypress can look elegant all by itself in a beautiful pot. Low-growing conifers can work wonderfully in troughs, miniature landscapes, and rock-garden-style containers.
Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Confucius’, yellow Hinoki cypress, for example (and pictured above), offers soft gold-to-green foliage and a pyramidal form. Lovely! But here’s an important reminder: Containers dry out more quickly than garden soil, so even drought-tolerant plants need careful attention to watering when grown in pots.
Some Conifers Have Great Stories
Plant people love a good discovery story, and conifers have plenty of them. For instance, many unusual cultivars began as chance seedlings or mutations that someone happened to notice.
Take our friends at Iseli Nursery®. Their Picea glauca ‘Rainbow’s End’® was discovered as a plant mutation in 1978. And their famous Picea pungens ‘Fat Albert’, Fat Albert Colorado blue spruce (pictured above), was selected for its reliably strong pyramidal habit and blue foliage.
It’s a wonderful reminder that many of the unusual conifers we enjoy today exist because someone looked closely enough to notice that one plant was different.
Conifers themselves have an ancient story, too. Their relatives appear in the fossil record hundreds of millions of years ago, long before flowering plants came to dominate much of the world’s vegetation. Conifers are gymnosperms, meaning their seeds are not enclosed inside an ovary the way the seeds of flowering plants are.
And here’s another fun fact: Not every conifer is evergreen. Larches, dawn redwoods, and bald cypresses are conifers that lose their foliage seasonally. “Conifer” and “evergreen” are often used almost interchangeably in everyday conversation, but botanically, they are not the same thing.
Come Take a Closer Look
Look beyond “green tree” and notice the details. Soft needles or crisp scales. Powder-blue foliage. New growth glowing gold. Tiny cones. Sweeping branches. Tight little globes. Narrow architectural spires. Plants that look almost whimsical and others that bring quiet elegance to a landscape.
Whether you need a privacy screen, a handsome evergreen foundation plant, a focal point, something special for a container, or a specimen that will become part of your landscape for many years, conifers offer an extraordinary number of possibilities.
We are proud to carry an extensive selection from Iseli Nursery® along with conifers from other specialty growers, including unusual sizes, colors, forms, and cultivars you may not find everywhere.
Come wander through the conifers here at B.B. Barns and take your time. Sometimes the plant you did not know you were looking for is the one that completely changes your garden.
