Ragtimegal, Thanks, but the flowers belong to the wife. I grow the food and she makes things pretty. Gotta satisfy all the senses. I do mix the dirt for her flowers. I do have to brag a little by saying I am a slightly above average photographer. You know, composition and all that stuff. ooooohhhhh yes, The flowers. The purple trailing blooms belong to a plant called "New Wonder". It is an Australian plant which simply loves heat and full sun. It is very, very draught tolerant, so its okay if you forget to water it for a couple of days. The succulent with the orange blooms is common Pursalane or pigweed. It is available in many colors and is also heat and draught tolerant. If you like pursalane, it is great. It does reseed prolifically and seems to be able to almost grow on a concrete slab. We tend to reuse a lot of our soil each year simply by remixing it and returning it to the containers. All of our soil has pursalane seed in it and it regrows. Wild pursalane is also edible, I don't know about domesticated pursalane. Pursalane also seems to attract a lot of ants. The blooms appear to have a sweet nectar which some ants find irresistable. The ants are what we used to call sugar ants and don't seem to hurt anything. Feel free to ask any questions. Ted

Planting on a north or east side of a home with some shelter will help evergreens avoid "winter burn", so being on the east side of your home should be fine. I don't know how much cover you have, but roots in containers get colder than in the ground. Some evergreens are more fragile than others...my wife and I have wrapped containers during severe cold snaps with blankets! Water well before your first hard freeze, but then after that if you have a warm/dry spell give more water at least once a month until March....while the tree may be dormant, it can still be growing roots and needs some water, and contrary to "dormancy" thought, evergreen trees continue to use sunlight and carbon dioxide in the air to make food during the winter. Therefore, it needs to get some sun unless you have a shade tolerant species. Speaking of which, since it sounds like you want smaller more conical/pyramidal than globe trees, you may want to consider Picea glauca 'Jean's Dilly' or Picea glauca 'Rainbow's End'. But make sure you get these dwarf or miniatures...their brothers get significantly bigger! My wife and I have about 25 container trees that we keep moving and caring for while we decide where to plant our roots for the next stage of our lives. :)

I'd tease some of the roots away from the root mass and pot up for this year. Next year, before buds open, I would remove MOST of the soil, fix any root issues, and repot into an appropriate mix. The gritty mix would work well. If you repot using a soil that supports perched water, you need to be considerate of root volume: soil volume. If you use the gritty mix or any other combination of ingredients that doesn't hold perched water, you can use a container as large as you like. Al

Various columnar conifers are used in this fashion.....trained/pruned into a spiral or stacked poofs of foliage (balls) - arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), yews, columnar junipers, dwarf Alberta spruce tend to be the most common selections. Any of these make a decent containerized specimen but ALL will need regular and consistent attention in terms of root pruning to keep size in check and foliage pruning to keep the spiral or whatever other topiary form they take distinct and tidy. If you do not wish a topiary form like the spiral and just want a containerized conifer, then there are literally scores of mini or dwarf cultivars than could work. These are defined by their rate of growth, not by their ultimate size. Minis and dwarfs grow slowly enough (minis: 1" per year; dwarfs: less than 6" per year) that they can be grown in containers long term relatively easily. You will still need to attend to root pruning and soil refreshing or replacement but not to the degree of frequency you would with a faster growing cultivar. I have a whole collection of dwarf or very slow growing conifers in containers. Chamaecyparis obtusa offers a wealth of dwarf cultivars in a wide range of shapes and sizes and that species makes up the bulk of my collection but I also have Cryptomeria, pines and a spruce and a fir. I'd probably have a lot more but there is a limit on the number of containers I can maintain properly - I have around 80 now - so I have curtailed my collecting :-) Not all are dwarf conifers either........I also have a Japanese maple addiction and a bunch of other containerized shrubs and trees. FWIW, I spend about twice the time (maybe more) maintaining my containerized plants as I do with those planted in the ground! btw, there are also broadleaved evergreens that are trained as containerized topiaries.....boxwood is common, also privet, myrtle and eugenia.