Koreana Cones
Garden Design - December 2011
A Conifer is for Life not just for Christmas.
I would imagine that conifers, in the form of Christmas trees, feature quite highly with you at the moment. However there is far more to conifers than as a supporting act for baubles and glitter.
As a species, conifers are hugely diverse.
They come in sizes from less than 3 feet tall to the tallest tree in the world standing at about 380 feet. Interestingly, the oldest known tree is also a conifer – a pine which is believed to be 4,842 years old.
Conifers come in a huge range of shapes and colours. They can be round, flat, ground hugging, weeping, conical or pyramid shaped with colours ranging from green to blue, gray and gold. Some have interestingly coloured new growth or change colour completely during the summer or winter. Others have extraordinary coloured cones or even flowers.
Sadly conifers have something of a bad reputation as either being dull or taking the role of the wicked leylandii. This is a shame because they can form an excellent role in the design of a garden.
Conifers are very structural and form silhouettes almost like green sculpture. They offer the opportunity to include strong vertical or horizontal structure whilst at the same time being interesting all year round. You can use them as the anchors or punctuation points around which a design can be built.
They can be used for hedging, topiary and tough salt resistant windbreaks.
On a grand scale few sights are more impressive than a mature cedar of Lebanon or Monkey Puzzle tree. Another beautiful large conifer is the Bhutan pine (Pinus wallichiana) which grows to about 20 metres. It is elegant and conical with long soft drooping needles.
On a smaller scale Picea glauca ‘JW Daisy’s White’ grows to about 1.2 metres. It is cone shaped and in late spring has creamy white new shoots which gradually turn green.
Pinus mungo ‘Ophir’ is very slow growing eventually reaching about 1.5 metres. In the summer its relatively long needles are green, but during winter they change into glowing gold. It looks stunning contrasted with the blue needles of Aibes concolor ‘Wattez Prostrate’.
For more drama the intensely blue Picea pungens Hoopsii grows very slowly to about 3 metres or Abies koreana with cones of dusky purple when young.
Your Christmas tree is just the tip of a very useful and diverse group of plants. Don’t forget them after 12th night.
First Published December 2011 By The Dart
Colette Charsley 01803 722449
