Adding Evergreens to My Pinetum

April 2, 2025

Planting evergreens is a great way to add color and texture in the garden, attract wildlife, and help clean and purify the air.

Here at my farm, I have an area I call my pinetum. It's an arboretum of pine trees and other conifers I developed soon after I moved to the property. The trees and shrubs have grown extremely well here, and I continue to plant additional specimens every year. Last week, I purchased a beautiful selection of young evergreens from Summer Hill Nursery in Madison, Connecticut. I knew they would be perfect for the recently expanded area of the pinetum garden. Among them - a variety of interesting pines, junipers, and Oriental spruce. I also added some dawn redwood and bald cypress trees. Once they arrived, I positioned them where they would be planted and the crew got to work.

Enjoy these photos.

: For me, it’s always so exciting to bring home a new selection of plants for the farm. These evergreens from Summer Hill Nursery are all so beautiful and healthy.

: Once I got them home, the plants were unloaded right away.

: I was happy to place them in their approximate planting positions. My gardeners will also check each individual plant’s space and light needs and adjust accordingly.

: Twisted Needle White Pine is an evergreen with unique, green-blue ‘twisted’ needles. It is fast growing and reaches heights of more than 30-feet with just as wide a spread.

: The twisted, spindly tufts of needles give the tree an almost fluffy appearance.

: This is Pinus sylvestris ‘Gold Coin’ Scots Pine, a mid-sized pyramidal tree with gold needles year-round. Summer needles are a soft yellowish-green, while winter needles are more brilliant gold.

: Pinus strobus ‘Golden Candles’ Eastern White Pine has electric yellow foliage in spring that softens to light green by end of summer.

: The needles of the ‘Golden Candles’ White Pine are five-inches long and arranged in bundles of five.

: ‘Cynthia Waxman’ Japanese Umbrella Pine, Sciadopitys verticillata, is a dense, slow-growing, symmetrical, dwarf cone-shaped tree with dark green foliage.

: The ‘Slim Jim’ Umbrella Pine is a compact, columnar variety known for its dense, dark green needles and slow growth.

: The needles are long and soft to the touch. ‘Slim Jim’ is also non-cone bearing.

: This is Juniperus chinensis ‘Obelisk’. It is a small, evergreen coniferous tree known for its dense, irregularly columnar shape and dark blue-green foliage. It’s a hardy drought and wind resistant specimen making it a great choice for many gardens.

: The foliage of the Obelisk Juniper is dark blue-green. Its needles are pointed and can grow up to a half-inch long.

: Burke’s Variegated Red Japanese Pine, Pinus densiflora, is a multi-stemmed evergreen with a distinctive and refined pyramidal form.

: It features striking wide, horizontal, creamy yellow bands on each needle, which are visible year-round on rough branches.

: The Blue Dwarf Japanese Stone Pine is another a multi-stemmed evergreen shrub that only grows to about nine-feet tall. Its ground hugging habit will add a nice balance to the other taller columnar specimens.

: The Formosan juniper is a hardy, low maintenance evergreen. It typically grows to about 80-feet tall and has a branching irregular habit.

: It has needle-like leaves on pendulous branches, giving it a fuzzy, droopy appearance.

: And this is one of my favorites, Picea orientalis ‘Skylands,’ a Golden Oriental Spruce. Can you guess why? The variety ‘Skylands’ – has the same name as my beloved home in Maine. This is a stunning variety of golden spruce with a nice tight upright habit. It reached 12 to 15 feet tall in about 10 years. I have a few of these trees in my pinetum.

: Its foliage is attractive yellow that changes to gold in spring. The needles then turn chartreuse in the fall, which persists throughout winter.