Thank you for IDing those! I did not realize they would get so large

Most likely I will have to order online. It’s about an hour drive to the nearest decent sized city and even there the selection is very limited. I made the drive Tuesday to have a look but they mostly only had very “Modern Brick Home” style evergreens— Green Giant, Emerald Green Arborvitae, Boxwood, etc. They didn’t really have a selection of unique evergreen dwarf varieties. I’ve been trying to find some unusual dwarf hemlocks and spruces but it has proven rather challenging.

First, be aware that the photograph is enhanced...this happens a lot. Those colors are way over saturated. Nothing is that red or blue in real life. I can't ID all of those for sure, but I believe the blue is actually Abies lasiocarpa 'Glauca Compacta', it's not concolor. However, there are many other similiar options, including Abies concolor 'Archer's Dwarf', which is easily manageable for many, many years. If you learn how to prune conifers properly, you can maintain them in small gardens for even longer.

The plant in the front is a dwarf hemlock, maybe Nana or some other cultivar, tough to say. The small japanese maple is Acer palmatum 'Shaina' or similar, and the larger japanese maple at the back could be any of upright's with deep red/purple color: Acer palmatum 'Tamukeyama' or 'Purple Ghost'... Even the Japanese maple experts can't tell one from the other!

if you are going to hang around the forums.. and want relevant info.. plz add your location on your member's bage so we know where you are ...

ken

It doesn't look enhanced to me....those colors look very accurate, compared to what's being grown around here. And since the photographer is more or less local, I would assume that is a PNW garden. Especially the Japanese maples sporting their new spring foliage - color saturation on them is extremely intense!! And yes, be leery of anyone attempting to assign a cultivar name to most JM's just based on a photo....you need a lot more data than is available form that to come very close (btw, Tamukeyama is a weeping dissectum.......and there are none of those in the photo).

Yes I've owned abies concolor that are bluer than that. I bet the cultivar shown is Compacta.

Too obscure to say if its concolor or lasciocarpa. Needles look (at this view) to be too long for lasciocarpa and concolor has some cultivars with that hue to them. The Tsuga canadensis may be the one sold as 'Golden Duchess'.

tj

If you practice and don't mind the work, pruning will keep all of these in desired size. But you have to understand the maintenance going in; it's manageable in a small garden for someone who has a good eye and is willing to do the work.

I have a Dwarf Alberta Spruce that gets brown parts in winter and gets all green again in summer. The plant prunes itself to size and moreover changes its shape a little from one year to the next :-) Would be hard to reproduce the effect though :-)

Sc77- Thank you! I will be sure to keep that in mind about photo enhancement. That hadn’t occurred to me but definitely something to be aware of while shopping

ken- I’m sure it’s obvious, but I’m a newbie here at Houzz lol. I added the info you mentioned. Thanks for the tip!

Wow! It sounds like I asked a much more complicated question than I realized I had! I had no idea there were so many different cultivars of conifers.

This definitely gives me a great place to start. I’ve been looking up the names mentioned and even if they aren’t exact they are close enough to be able to get the color/look i was hoping for.

Sara Malone- I don’t mind pruning some. That seems like it would be much easier than trying to find tiny conifers that don’t get any bigger than 4’. I assume it wouldn’t be a great idea to buy a full sized spruce and then try to keep it smaller than 4’ Right? Is there a certain maximum height that I should still aim for even if pruning?

While any conifer can attain a very generous size given ideal planting conditions and a long enough time frame, you want to look for those labeled as dwarfs or minis. These have a very reduced rate of growth, typically less than 6" per year, so are much easier to be able to maintain at a smaller size. And some grow exceedingly slowly, so don't even require much pruning to keep size in check.

ultimate size.. is a function of annual growth ... see link ...

e.g. a plant that grows a foot per year.. will be 10 feet in 10 years.. 20 in 20 ... etc.. as trees.. they never really stop growing .. in your lifetime anyway ...

so looking at the link.. you can see that you would be looking.. as noted above.. for dwarfs or minis ... and if you want the out of the ordinary.. you will probably be mail ordering good cultivars ... you just arent going to find this type of stuff at bigbox... and even then .. often.. the stuff they call dwarf... isnt really dwarf ... [and you would probably want to stay away from the dwarves that grow 6 inches per year ...]

anyone have an old links .. to the posts on our favored vendors ????

TN is one of the best locations for plant propagation.. but most of the conifers producers are out west ... tending toward the PNW ... so mail order is the way to go ...

you ought to find out if there are any arboretums within a few hours drive.. and visit those .... i know there is one in cinci.. if you are near there ....

as i said.. welcome.. and now.. good luck ...ken

http://conifersociety.org/conifers/conifer-sizes/

Well, you might have just found a new hobby... The same thing happened to me, I came to these forums like 8 years ago, just looking for an evergreen privacy hedge... I didn't even know what a cultivar was! Now I probably have > 50 conifers, have rooted them, grafted them, grown from seed, and joined the conifer society... It's a interesting topic, because new cultivars are being introduced all the time. BTW, 50 is very modest for 8 years of collecting... the guy who wrote the nursery reviews that ken mention (below) had over 1000 I believe! (**Correction: Over 2000**)...crazy

[https://www.houzz.com/discussions/the-best-online-conifer-nursery-reviews-here-dsvw-vd~1885163[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/the-best-online-conifer-nursery-reviews-here-dsvw-vd~1885163)

-Shawn

Join the American Conifer Society. We have lots of members in Tennessee. Our 2018 national meeting is in Raleigh - if you could make that you would find yourself among a couple of hundred conifer nuts. We're visiting some great gardens, too!

American Conifer Society

Be aware going in that the genuinely slow growing ones have more production time behind them, are priced accordingly. For instance a dwarf Korean fir in a 3 gallon pot might be priced at about 100 dollars at a walk in garden center, in my metropolitan area.

hopin4 , you came to the right place

questions are always welcome

keep us updated

ron