If you're talking about the ones from Stark's, their "Colonade" apples, I have 4 of them -- Crimson, Red, and Green Spire (two of the Crimson). They get larger than 8 feet x 2 feet by quite a bit. Mine unpruned are about 8 feet across and 12 feet wide. I've taken to whacking them back a bit to keep them more compact and attractive. I've gotten up to a bushel of fruit off of each. They are all pretty good. Crimson is actually sort of delicious-shaped, and the flavor and acidity kind of reminds me of Granny Smith in a way, but perhaps I pick too early. Red is similar to a Jonathan in taste and appearance. The Green reminds me most of Golden Delicious or Gingergold. They are all fairly early apples, around Labor Day to mid-Sept, and don't keep particularly well. They definitely have their place, good for tight corners of the landscape.

I'll start by qualifying my response that I can't recommend columnar trees specifically since I don't grow any, but will add what I notice about color. Here oak autumn foliage color seems to vary year to year more than most trees, even with named varieties, though this fall they were almost as bright as some of the maples. To my mind, they do have the advantage of being one of the later turning trees and so extend the color season by a couple of weeks. Other later-turning trees with more consistent color include American beech (which turn from the outside of the tree inward, a lovely effect that often gives it chestnut, gold, and chartreuse simultaneously), birches, and aspen, both of which turn gold. I particularly like yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis) and river birch (Betula nigra) both of which have lovely form, interesting bark, and seem much loved by the smaller birds. Red maples and their crosses (the crosses such as A. freemanii turn later than straight red maples IME) and sugar maples turn bright colors consistently, but there is a fair variety to the actual color based on the tree's genetics and its location in sun vs. shade. More red to orange occurs in more sun IME. I also find that the red maple crosses and the sugar maples tend to hold their leaves longer than the straight red maples here. I like pagoda dogwoods (Cornus alternifolia) a lot - they grow wild here in everything from full sun to full shade, and turn nice, though not stunning, colors regardless. They are the only tree dogwood that will be consistently hardy for you, though the tree's provenance may be important to how well it does. I have three Golden Shadows, the trade name for 'W. Stackman', that are about 5 years old, and they haven't grown much, so I am not sure if they are perhaps a bit less cold tolerant than the species or if the half shade that they are in has too little light for their liking this far north. I find the straight species to be a rapid grower, over my head in 4 years from seed. The have a short season of lacy spring flowers, followed by berries that slowly turn from green to pinkish to more purple to end a purple-black with bright red stems. The birds keep the tree hopping with activity when the berries are ripe, and then after the fall color, the winter branch structure is graceful layers. If you end up needing to replace the junipers, there are some varieties of blue spruce shorter than full tree height that may do well for you there if you want that bluish color. Even though western, blue spruce seem to do better with our humidity than J. scopulorum. Or put it a row of Fothergilla which has great spring flowers, stunning fall color, and is dense enough May-October to make an excellent screen if you use one of the taller ones such as F. major. Its slight suckering tendencies and dense branching will even help with winter screening. To save yourself having to add your location to posts or us having to ask and then hunt for the info, you might want to put your location and zone in your profile so that it shows up next to your name whenever you post. Here's how: Go to Your Houzz in upper right of every page, click Edit Profile, and on the left side click advanced settings. Well down the advanced settings page is a blank labeled Climate Zone for Garden Forums along with a link to find your zone. If you add info on your state or the nearest large city you will get even better information since zone only relates to average coldest winter temperatures. Then return to the top of the page and click Done Editing.

Depends on if anyone there ever imports it and puts it on the market - something that may never happen. We have a number of different kinds that are or have been on the market here that have never become prevalent - or even present at all, it would seem - in Britain. (Since there is extensive participation a good place to look for signs of a retail presence of any particular plant is The RHS Plant Finder). I haven't seen any columnar purple-leaved cultivars mentioned by A. L. Jacobson in his book Purpleleaf Plums (1992, Timber Press, Portland). Jacobson is a careful and thorough researcher who spends years preparing each of his titles, combs through dusty old nursery catalogs in the basements of university libraries, studies live specimens in arboreta, botanic gardens and nurseries, and even buys examples of plants of interest and grows them himself, in his garden or house in order to make his own observations. So it is pretty safe to assume that if his 1992 book (apparently) doesn't have anything about them narrow habit purple-leaf plums were basically unknown before the same general period of time that the Australian and Lake County introductions both appeared. Suggesting that an Australian company imported the American tree, with them or another firm putting it on the market with different naming there. A way to check would be to look for any historical information about the Australian stock that may be available.

I’m a newbie to owning columnar junipers - we planted ours in the spring. Ours are approx 6’ high presently. According to the local arborist who advised me on caring for them, shearing off approx half of the new growth twice a year will encourage them to grow stouter and denser which will help them stand up to the snow loads in our area. You can find some YouTube videos on shearing young arborvitae - similar principle. We got our Taylor Junipers and Crimson Spire Oaks at The Tree Farm in Longmont, CO and our Blue Arrow Junipers at Harmony Gardens in Brighton, CO. But there are other options closer to you. I would check with Tagawa Gardens in Centennial. If you can go in on a weekday when they are not busy, you should be able to consult with their tree guy and get his recommendations. They also put out some helpful videos on YouTube about plant and tree selections for our area, how to water, winter watering, etc.