Bizarre Conifers


I spend every Christmas with my older and younger brothers who both live in Eugene, Oregon. Every year, on the day after Christmas, I stop by Greer Gardens (located on Goodpasture Island Road in Eugene). This year I bought a small weeping sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum 'Pendulum'). Last year I bought a Larix x marschlinsii 'Varied Directions', and the previous year I bought a weeping European larch (Larix decidua ' Pendula'). My taste for such oddly shaped plants often makes me think about where to place such plants in gardens, so that is the subject for this article.

I call the style of my garden "rustic formal", so I place these conifers in the same sort of locations where sculptures are usually placed in formal gardens - at the terminus of a vista or axis. I have planted the weeping sequoia at the south end of my narrow canal, which is shown in the photo below. The large shrub at the end of the canal is a Corylus avellana 'Contorta' (Harry Lauder's walking stick), which is also a very sculptural plant when leafless during the winter; my weeping sequoia is planted behind it. A douglas fir, whose trunk is visible to the left of the shrub, was damaged during a winter storm, so it has been cut down.

Weeping sequoias are known for each tree having its own unique shape. Most specimens are narrow, upright columns of foliage, but they have often been trained to grow that way. The specimen that Monrovia features on their website is a mound of weeping foliage. I prefer the specimen shown at the Iseli Nursery website, so I plan on encouraging my tree to grow in a similar manner. Judging from information that I found on the internet, this tree grows slowly to the height of 20, or possibly 40 feet. The north side of my garden is backed by conifers, so while the shape of this tree is very striking, it should also blend in.

The photo below shows the path that divides my vegetable garden from my lilypond. The mound of foliage on the left side of the photo is my Harry Lauder's walking stick. There is a narrow channel leading from the pond which runs the full length of the path. My weeping larch and 'Varied Directions' larch are planted next to each other at the end of that channel. I decided to plant them together because I wasn't thrilled with the large weeping larch that I saw at Greer Gardens; it looked like a haystack during the winter. When I came across a photo of 'Varied Directions' on the internet, I knew that it was exactly what I needed. I can visualize the combination of 'Varied Direction's' erratic growth pattern with the strongly weeping form of my other larch leaning out over the water of my lilypond.

The copyright of the article Bizarre Conifers in Garden Design is owned by Kirk Johnson. Permission to republish Bizarre Conifers in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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