Find the right evergreens for your yard, then let is snow

There’s nothing like a well-timed snowfall to remind you that you probably don’t have enough evergreens in your garden.

Nothing captures a winter landscape better than evergreens, which not only provide a little bit of color under all that white but also offer interest that can make a yard as exciting as it in summer rather than a plain blanket of white.

But you’d be forgiven for thinking evergreens can be a little boring, given that homeowners tend to plant the same varieties over and over again. It’s a self-perpetuating problem — homeowners buy the same boring evergreens so garden centers mostly carry those boring evergreens, and homeowners have a hard time buying anything else because that’s what they see at garden centers.

But homeowners — and garden centers — can do better. There’s a whole world of great evergreens out there perfect for Ozaukee County yards, and they are the same thing you see on every street corner.

Norway spruce (Picea abies) can grow to spectacular sizes in our area when they are happy, but even homeowners with small properties can have them if they pick up the cultivar ‘Cupressina.’ This columnar variety only gets 6 to 10 feet wide and 30 to 40 feet tall. It’s a fairly fast grower as well. Three that I planted last year put on more than foot of growth in their first year in the ground.

Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra) is a beautiful and fairly slow growing tree that is available in several different cultivars, varying from just a few feet wide to up to 20 feet wide. It has fairly dense branching so it’s good for screening an undesirable view.

Eastern hemlock (Tsuja canadensis) has a bad rap because it’s been nearly wiped out on the East Coast by a nasty little bug called a woolly adelgid. The bugs haven’t been found in Wisconsin and trees can be treated if it should become a problem. That should be enough to assuage any fears of planting this gorgeous and graceful conifer. It grows to be quite large, but not quickly, and it has the benefit of being a rare conifer that tolerates, and even prefers, a bit of shade. It also likes a moist to wet site.

False cypress (Chamaecyparis) encompasses a wide-ranging group of trees, but Chamaecyparis pisifera has proven tough and even deer resistant in our area. Soft Serve is a charming small tree that grows to 10 feet with beautiful foliage and, with a fresh snowfall, looks like it came straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Cedar Rapids grows more quickly to 30 feet tall for those needing more screening.

White spruce (Picea glauca) is native to Wisconsin and may be a better choice than the popular Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens), but both are available in a huge variety of shapes and sizes for any yard.

Wisconsinites are fortunate —we can grow so many interesting evergreens that people in other places can’t. We just need to seek them out, plant them and then, let it snow.