Curator: Nate Sands

The planting for this collection began in Fall of 2007. The purpose of the collection is to illustrate the wide variety of conifers that exist. Conifers in the collection show the varying habits, characteristics, and colors that make conifers a fascinating group of plants and also a vital part of the landscape. Many of the conifers in the garden will be registered names and are available to the trade, but some have not been registered and introduced to the trade.

Conifers are commonly classified as follows:

Size:
• Miniature – 1” or less of growth per year
• Dwarf – 1-6” of growth per year
• Semi-Dwarf or Intermediate – 6-12” of growth per year
• Large – more than 12” of growth per year

Shape:
• Globose: globe-like or rounded in general outline.
• Pendulous: upright or mounding with varying degrees of weeping branches.
• Narrow upright: much taller than broad; includes plants referred to as fastigiate, columnar, narrowly pyramidal or narrowly conical.
• Broad upright: includes all other upright plants with do not fit into categories 1-3.
• Prostrate: ground-hugging, carpeting plants without an inclination to grow upward.
• Spreading: wider than tall.
• Irregular: erratic growth pattern.
• Culturally altered: pruned or trained into formal or imaginative shapes, such as high grafts or standards.

For more information regarding conifers, please visit the American Conifer Society at www.conifersociety.org.

Current Plant List:
• Picea omorika ‘Pendula Bruns’
Weeping Serbian Spruce
Introduced by Bruns Nursery, Bad Zwischenahn, Germany in 1955.
Habit: Strict upright weeping.
Growth rate: Intermediate (6-12" (15-30cm) per year), and 6-15' (1.8-4.5m) at 10 years.
USDA Zone: 4 (-30 to -20 F / -34.4 to -28.9 C).

• Picea pungens 'Procumbens'
Prostrate Colorado Spruce
Habit: Prostrate or Ground Covering
Growth rate: Intermediate (6-12" (15-30cm) per year), and 6-15' (1.8-4.5m) at 10 yrs.
USDA Zone: 2 (-50 to -40 F / -45.5 to -40 C).

• Picea crassifolia
Qinghai or Chinese spruce
Habit: columnar-pyramidal
Growth rate: 40-75’ at maturity
Notes: Native genera to China. The plant in the collection was propagated in 1988 by the Arnold Arboretum from seed collected in China.

Additions to be planted in the near future:
• Abies balsamea 'Nana'
• Abies balsamea 'Piccolo'
• Abies concolor 'Compacta'
• Gingko biloba 'Chase Manhatten'
• Gingko biloba 'Jade Butterflies'
• Gingko biloba 'Mariken'
• Gingko biloba 'Munchkin'
• Gingko biloba 'Spring Grove'
• Gingko biloba 'WB'
• Larix decidua 'Horstman's Recurva'
• Larix kaemperfi 'Nana'
• Picea abies 'Asselyn'
• Picea abies 'Mucronata'
• Picea glauca 'Pendula'
• Picea omorika 'Pendula'
• Picea pungens 'Globe'
• Picea pungens 'Hillside'
• Picea pungens 'Iseli Fastigiate'
• Picea pungens 'Sester Dwarf'
• Pinus hakkodensis
• Pinus cembra 'Pygmaea'
• Pinus sylvestris 'Albyn Prostata'
• Pseudotsuga menziesii 'Little John'
• Tsuga canadensis 'Everitt's Golden'
• Tsuga canadensis 'Jacqueline Verkade'
• Tsuga canadensis 'Stewart's Gem'
• Tsuga caroliniana 'LaBar's Weeping'