Federal coneheads

“Hey Ed! Did you see that one of the largest and most popular branches of the federal government have become coneheads?”

“Pardon me?”

“Yeah Ed, apparently the United States government has gone conehead!” laughed my friend. “You’ve got to check out their website.”

The conversation continued like this for a little while before I was able to get my friend to tell me exactly what he was talking about. As it turns out (and maybe many of you are already aware of this) one of the new Holiday designs for the United States Postal Service this year is a collection of four artist’s renderings featuring conifers.

I checked out the USPS website and found that they have holiday conifer stamps and other products available. The stamps feature nicely drawn details of the foliage and cones (or in the case of the Juniper, its berry-like structures). They also have very nicely produced postcards prestamped and with information about each conifer. I was very excited and impressed when I saw what they had to offer.

My wife and I were just talking a few days ago about our need to purchase more stamps for our holiday greeting cards this year. I hope she sees these great conifer stamps. Since they are Forever stamps, I think we should stock up now – then we’ll have plenty of conifer themed stamps to last us a very long time.

Check out the link above and you’ll find four conifers featured in the set including; Abies balsamea (Balsam Fir), Juniperus virginiana (Eastern Red Cedar), Picea pungens (Colorado Spruce) and Pinus ponderosa (Ponderosa Pine).

Happy Holidays!

Ed-
Conifer Lover

Waves of joy

This current surge of cold weather, and its resulting effect on my aching joints, has reminded me how important thick, dense groundcovers are in the garden. I’m aching just thinking about what a huge chore I would have to face every spring and summer if I didn’t utilize some of the all-natural, year-round, hardy and beautiful ground covering qualities of many exciting conifers. I have enough bare space in my garden that weeds still do manage to pose a challenge to me – but there is less of it every year, due in some part to my groundcovers.

When some folks think, coniferous groundcovers, they may envision low growing carpets of Juniper or Taxus – which are fine examples and can be very effective. Other great plants to cover your ground and ornament your space may include any of a great number of weeping conifers from, Pine and Spruce to Hemlocks and firs.

Like a waterfall, the foliage of Pinus densiflora 'Pendula' spills and flows over the ground creating a dense covering to help the fight against weeds.

Some great spreading and ground-covering conifers will, in and of themselves, make fantastic individual specimens, while happily covering bare ground and making less space available for weed seeds to germinate. Others may be much more subtle as they nonchalantly creep and crawl, filling in empty spaces, drape themselves over walls or around rocks, and generally provide a nice low addition of color and texture to the year-round interest of the conifer garden, all while reducing the gardener’s workload.

For example, one great choice is Pinus densiflora ‘Pendula’(Weeping Japanese Red Pine). This delicious bright green pine has long thin needles adorning reddish brown twigs and deeply textured mature bark. If allowed to simply grow naturally, it would build wave upon wave of undulating foliage that mounds and spreads covering as much space as the garden will allow. Most likely found in the independent garden center grafted at a couple feet off the ground or trained on a stake to three or more feet tall, ‘Pendula’ will quickly turn and begin it’s waterfall-like decent to the ground where it will spill and splash and fill in empty space with its lush foliar display. Staked to six or eight feet (or taller) the effect can be absolutely stunning. Keep in mind that the taller the plant is staked, the longer it will take many of the branches to reach the ground and begin to do their job.

Other great choices of ground covering conifers include:
Abies koreana ‘Green Carpet’
Abies nordmanniana ‘Golden Spreader’
Cedrus deodara ‘Prostrate Beauty’
Cepahalotaxus harringtonia ‘Prostrata’
Juniperus chinensis ‘Daub’s Frosted’
Juniperus communis ‘Corielagan’
Juniperus conferta ‘Silver Mist’
Juniperus horizontalis ‘Golden Carpet’
Picea abies ‘Pendula’
Picea pungens ‘Procumbens’
Pinus strobus ‘Stony Brook’
Pinus sylvestris ‘Albyn Prostrata’
Tsuga canadensis ‘Pendula’

Ed-
Conifer Lover

The garden room

One great advantage of a conifer garden, should one have a desire for privacy, is that you can create very nice garden rooms where the neighbors can’t find you. The disadvantage is that if you’ve fallen asleep while sunbathing, your snoring may give away your location – to the parcel delivery man.

I’ve actually created a few little garden rooms. The one we use the most frequently partially encloses the patio just off the back of the house. I’ve planted a combination of a few slender upright conifers, mixed in a couple mid-sized, broadly conical forms, added a small Japanese maple and filled with lower, spreading forms that all work together to make a very nice colorful border to enclose the patio.

With the recent arrival of very hot weather, I thought it would be fun to relive the old days and lay out in the sun for a little while. Dressed in my shorts, flip-flops, hat and mp3 player, I dragged my favorite reclining lawn chair into position in my “secure” garden room. Full quart of iced tea at my side, I was ready to enter that state of meditation I achieve when lying in the hot sun. Some people call it a nap, but I wouldn’t dare fall asleep in this kind of hot sun, would I?

After watching the humming birds chase one another in a contest of territorial dominance, I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hat. Then, in what seemed like mere moments later, I began to hear someone speaking in some strange dialect.

Juniperus communis 'Gold Cone' is another great narrow upright conifer for use as a colorful specimen or as part of a screen for your garden room.

“Sir? Excuse me…? Uhhhmm… Sir?”

My mind slowly beginning to drift back to reality, perspiration dripping from all exposed skin, I wondered what strange lyrics these were to the music I was listening to.

“Excuse me, uhhhhmmmm, Sir – the note on the front door said I should bring this around back to you.”

“What?” I mumbled with the kind of snort and growl that accompanies the tail end of a deep snore. My wife must have gone somewhere.

“I’m sorry sir, did I wake you? – It’s just that…”

“No, I’m not asleep… I… What time is it? Who are you?”

“UPS, sir, the sign on the front door said I needed to bring this around to you….”

You get the idea. I was thankful I had decided not to fully return to the days of my youth and retained some sense of decency in what I thought was my “secure” space.

As a word of advice, no matter how private a space you may think you have created with the nearly endless selections of colorful conifers available today, you never know when you may need to accept a parcel delivery – or when the Google Earth satellites may be photographing your area from high overhead.

Ed-
Conifer lover

Ever eat a spruce tree?

Remember Euell Gibbons? He became nationally famous back in the mid-70′s while promoting Grape Nuts cereal with his quote, “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.”

I had discovered Euell a couple of years prior to that when I came across his book, Stalking the Wild Asparagus at the library. What captured me – beyond the topic of wild foods – was the whimsical style of his writing. He made foraging for, cooking, and eating wild foods, sound like fun.

Care for a cup of tea?

I had learned about some wild foods, including pines, while in the Boy Scouts. While I never delved into the experience as deeply as Mr. Gibbons may have liked, I have certainly held onto my interest in natural foods. Recently I discovered some of the food aspects of one of my favorite genera of conifer, the spruce.

Did you know that the young shoots of spruce are high in vitamin C and that they can be brewed into a refreshing tea? Neither did I. In fact, according to wikipedia, the explorer “Captain Cook would have both malt and sugar-based spruce beer made during his sea voyages in order to prevent scurvy in his crew.” As it turns out, spruce beer was common in both the colonial United States and eastern Canada. There is still a spruce beer soft drink available in some parts of Canada today.

The majestic spruce has also been used medicinally for the treatment of respiratory diseases including tuberculosis and the leaves and gum of the tree have been used in the treatment of cancer. Other uses include treatment for skin complaints and to sooth a cough.

Not only can you fill your garden with colorful spruce trees of assorted shapes and sizes; with some research you might even be able to fill your medicine cabinet with remedies made from those same trees.

Ed-
Conifer Lover

Looking sharp in the garden

One of the great native trees to my area in the Pacific Northwest is the Sitka Spruce. Picea sitchensis is the largest growing of the spruce family and has a history rich in the folklore of the native peoples in this area. One very large old specimen near the Oregon Coast had been known as the largest Sitka Spruce in the United States until the storm of December 2, 2007 brought the tree down. It was reported to be 200 feet tall and estimated to be 500 to 750 years old. A beautiful forest tree, but a little too large for the average home garden, Picea sitchensis has “mothered” slower growing cultivars that are more garden friendly.

Picea sitchensis ‘Papoose’ is one dwarf form of the Sitka Spruce worthy of a place in any garden. Its needles are bi-colored giving the overall plant a nice blue-green appearance. Upon closer inspection the bi-color nature of the needles is revealed. Be careful, those needles are very sharp to the touch. When the new growth emerges, the outer sides of the needles are visibly bright green. As the foliage matures and hardens through the season, the green color becomes darker and the needles expand and curve outward exposing their waxy coating on the undersides giving a bluish appearance. Growing only 2-3 inches per year, ‘Papoose’ remains compact and tidy in the garden. The beautiful specimen pictured here is approximately seven feet tall, eight feet wide and nearly thirty years old.

Ed-

Conifer Lover

Thanks to my friends at Iseli Nursery for the photo links.

My green thumb turned blue

The cold Arctic air that I mentioned last week has moved into our area. I understand that what those of us in the Pacific Northwest will experience over the next few days is nothing like what many of our friends are enduring in other parts of the country right now. A good friend took his eleven year old son to the “big game” in Green Bay and managed to survive four hours of -21º F wind-chill Sunday. Conditions like that give me a new appreciation for our gray rainy days here.

When cold air does make its way into the PNW, I also renew my appreciation for hardy conifers and how great they are for those areas where the winter is commonly far more bitter cold than here. In an earlier blog, I mentioned a handful of dwarf Colorado Blue Spruce that I am particularly fond of. One of the most popular ones on my list is Picea pungens ‘Montgomery.’

Growing at perhaps one third to half the rate of the Colorado Blue Spruce, ‘Montgomery’ is a dwarf version reaching a height of 10 to 12 feet in 20 years. When young, ‘Montgomery’ will grow as a globe shaped mound. Its striking, consistant blue color will certainly draw the attention of passersby. As it matures, it will form a broad pyramidal shape eventually growning into a neat and compact version of the much larger parent tree. Some people prefer to prune out the developing dominant leader to encourage a broader than tall mound shaped plant into maturity. Either way, ‘Montgomery’ is a fantastic garden plant with brilliant blue color and extreme hardiness growing in zone 2 (-40 to -50º F).

‘Montgomery’s hardiness is an attribute that I don’t need to be concerned with where I live. I love it for its generally care free nature, great form and color. With all the shades of green in the garden, I’m thrilled to have ‘Montgomery’ as one contributer to the exciting range of blues to make my garden a real joy.

Ed-
Conifer Lover

Thanks to Iseli Nursery for the photo links!

The beauty of winter

We had a very nice holiday and even saw snow late on Christmas day! Outside our local mountain ranges, we don’t get snow very often or in very large quantities here in the Pacific Northwest, but once in a while if you are at the right place at the right time…. snow is kind of a treat.

I have many friends living in parts of the country where snow and severe cold are what they expect and prepare for every winter. One good thing that I almost always hear from my colder-climate friends is how beautiful their conifers are when covered in snow!

It’s such a rare occasion when I can enjoy the beauty of snow, that I get pretty excited when I find a conifer that almost looks like it’s glistening with frost all year-round. Picea omorika ‘Pimoko’ is a great example of a plant that almost sparkles in the sunlight because many of its needles twist and turn upwards exposing their bright whitish undersides.

‘Pimoko’  forms a nice rounded mound when young, and as it matures, its irregular form really adds interest to the garden. A great conifer with a neat and tidy appearance.  New foliage emerges like small spring green florets and matures to expose the undersides appearing like polished silver that sparkles in the sunlight - and hardy to zone 4 – need I say….I love it!

Ed-
Conifer Lover

Thanks to Iseli Nursery for the photo links!