For gardeners there are a number of considerations when selecting conifers. The first step in selecting any conifer for your garden would be to look at the hardiness. If your plant is not hardy for your particular zone you can cross it off right off the bat. Then you would want to look at native range and where plants generally thrive. Look at your local botanic gardens or universities as well as arboreta they will have excellent lists of plants and varieties. Here, we're looking at, for example, an eastern white pine, shaggy dog, that has a beautiful range of hardiness from zone 3 through 7. Above this plant is a nice glistening blue, a variety of a Japanese white pine. Then also we have a Japanese red pine, a low, green dwarf. These perform well in Atlanta and Eric is guessing nearly all of them do well in the west coast? Yes. The Pacific northwest is certainly a hotbed and that's why the nursery's located in the northwest just because they can grow them so beautifully with their mild climate. But for people further up north, the first thing would be to consider hardiness. What hardiness zone are you? One can just look that up using almost dozens of different sources online. That will then provide a general guideline for plant material that one can select.
By Dan Heims, President, Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.
Photographs courtesy of Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.
Terra Nova’s breeders have created a series of outstanding world-class echinaceas that are consistent in size, bloom power, color intensity and are a pollinator buffet. What’s not to like.
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