expect to wait a little longer .. to find out... you dont mention where you are ... other than zone.. and 6 is awful big ... i am glad you looked at the buds.. but w/o a pic.. i dont know how to interpret your words ... has anything else ... broken dormancy??? ,... flowering shrubs.. conifers.. etc ... are you suggesting its late compared to other things.. or are you just worrying early???? about 50% of my collection if showing winter damage.. all buds are fine ... but i lost BAC years ago.. here in MI z5 ..... so i cant look at mine.. to compare with your words .... have faith ... pix??? ken

Hi! How many hours of morning sun does the location receive? I don't think there are many conifers that will like or look good growing in shade all day but there are some that do okay. Tsuga canadensis 'Pendula' if your looking for weeping, Taxus cuspidata, and Picea orientalis may do well in bright shade. I can't think of anything off the top of my head that would even come close to a weeping blue atlas cedar for shade. Oh, perhaps Larix kaempferi 'Pendula'. It has the closest resemblance that can take light shade. It is deciduous and green rather than blue but quite cool looking and turns orange/yellow in the fall just before it drops it's needles. I mainly have experience with sunny locations so perhaps someone else here will have better suggestions for shade tolerant conifers.

"what about the tree makes you think it is in poor condition" For one, it has very few needles. The branches should be fully clothed with needles, whereas this one looks like only new growth is present. Also the pot it is in now may be adequate but the container it was in at the nursery could well have been too small, restricting root growth and causing stress. There is a limit to how much you can effectively train these into a serpentine form. If given room to grow and sufficient time, these get to be massive trees but the weight of the branching and the weeping habit keeps them low to the ground. They need to be trained along the top of a support system (like a fence) or the branches propped up if you don't want to allow the leader to just droop and grow naturally. And while I grow a great many conifers in containers, this is not a selection I would choose for that purpose on any sort of long term basis. It really needs to be in the ground. Check out these images to get a good sense of the potential for this tree.

i recently purchased a home with a weeping blue atlas cedar in the backyard. I had to transplant in the fall it because we put up a fence. Well it’s lost a significant amount of needles in the past couple months. Idk if this is stress due to the harsh winter and it being transplaneted, or if it’s dying. I attached two pictures... the picture with a large ammount of needles was taken in the fall right after I transplanted it. The other picture was just taken today.