In addition to Gods Own County I also maintain a gardeners tips web site with over 2000 pages of photos, tips and quirk posts. One of my recent pages ‘Rock on with my Garden’ explained how my ‘Rock Garden’ effectively became overgrown with conifers.
Experience with a ‘Conifery’
- Some conifers are out and out thugs like Cupressocyparis leylandii a tree sold for hedge growing. A suppliers quote that I found interesting was ‘height: easily maintained at 2-6 meters (I can’t reach that high) Very fast growing, expect up to between 70-90cm per year’. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
- The large variety of colours and styles that are available at reasonable prices make some excellent evergreen plants for form and varied habit.
- I like the prostrate forms that only grow about 1 foot high but cover a couple of square yards. There is an example of a spreading Juniper shown in the above photo from my back garden.
- Dwarf conifers don’t stay dwarf for ever but you can clip them or restrict the root growth in a container and thus there exuberance. Failing that you have to be prepared to sacrifice them and dig out the stumps which tend to be shallow rooted. That is a job I started last month and have some more work to keep me occupied for the rest of April.