How to thicken Thuja occidentalis/white cedars?
crushedpurple
5 years ago
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Comments (32)
gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agocrushedpurple thanked gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)Related Discussions
Thuja occidentalis or hybrid?
Comments (36)Resin, I've evidently got dumb deer on my land. Yes, as a generality, it is said that deer are removing this species from the landscape-in that no regeneration can take place without getting munched. But..........this is highly nuanced, and it would help if you knew the geography-along Wisconsin's "east coast" are several counties with dolomitic limestone very near to the surface. Door County is the most famous, but south of that, the same situation exists. In these counties, "white cedar" is able to regenerate, due to its ubiquity (my theory) in the landscape, such that hungry deer can't eat all of it. And even though often considered a "swamp tree", in these counties it grows up hills, on cliffs, etc. Now.........here's where it gets hairy: My land (home of the dumb deer) is NOT in that belt-not quite. It lies just north and west of the limestone area, my soil being sandy loam. But the plant is still extremely common, and looks just as good as it does in Door, Kewaunee, Manitowoc, etc. I believe there's some factor by which the limestone is still present-or its influence is. Thuja o. is after all, a well-known calciphile. In any case, it's a real common species in my central Oconto County location. We've counted up to 38 deer at a time in our field. Under the "cedars" in the swamp, there is not one square inch of snow-covered ground not also imprinted with deer prints. It's not as though they're not present. Far from it. But I can drag a sapling out into plain sight in the field, plant it and forget it. It won't get munched, but it will grow, as if nothing ever happened. Sorry for this treatise. If you lived here, you'd be even more surprised at this set of facts, given it's obvious you have awareness of this issue from afar. +oM...See MoreHow long do Thuja occidentalis cultivars live?
Comments (15)Listings of record trees include examples of cultivars that go back a ways. For instance a Thuja plicata 'Zebrina' measured at Stourhead in England during 2006 is known to have been planted in 1906. This cultivar does vary from the type primarily in having banded foliage, otherwise it still forms a large, apparently structurally sound tree. Many other conifer cultivars may instead have markedly aberrant growth forms that make them prone to falling open (columnar) or overwhelmed by adjacent plantings (dwarf), killed by other adversities such as cold (fixed juvenile) or drought (miniature). And any grown in containers at any point in the production and sales sequence may be planted in their final positions with unresolved root deformities that result in eventual girdling or toppling - on the market here grafted conifers appear to be routinely presented with corkscrew, j-rooted or otherwise severely misshapen root-stocks being involved. Cultivated examples of wild species will of course also be subject to this latter occurrence - but the additional vigor these often have may perhaps tend to help them overcome it and remain standing much of the time. Redwoods for example seem to pretty much never go over, regardless. What I have seen with T. occidentalis 'Woodwardii' specifically is that with age it tends to open up and separate into a low tree-like shape instead of remaining as a compact "globe". Perhaps this results in failures (splitting apart) in snowy areas or simply in a tendency for specimens having reached this condition (and size) being removed due to how they look (and how big they have become). We used to have a couple here, planted as foundation shrubs and that is what happened to them - as they increased in size they leaned away from the house, overwhelmed their positions, started to become uneven in shape and were removed. Many people buying a plant like this will be looking for a small ball ("globe") and become disenchanted when they end up with something big and lumpy....See MoreThuja occidentalis spacing
Comments (6)At my previous property, I went for a dense screen with the cheapest 'hedge cedar' on sale, 3'- 4' specimens planted on 2' centers. I had 2 neighbors in the back with an existing fence in a straight line, I planted 2' from the back fence. I planted on the lot line with my side neighbors as there were no side fences at the then new development. The dense planting draws the hedge trees up rather than sideways. It took only 7 or 8 years until they were 1 storey tall, they are now 2 storeys tall with a width of about 5' to 7' at the base. In particular, there is very little overhang over the back fence, the neighbors at the back never complained. The hedge grew too tall to shear even before I left. The unsheared hedge does splay here and there under heavy snowload, but I never had any branch breakage even under the heaviest snowloads, presumably because the dense planting intermingles the branches, thereby supporting each other. The splayed hedge always became smooth by itself in spring without me doing anything. The hedge shelters birds. In particular, it allows Northern Cardinals and American Robins to overwinter at higher latitudes than they normally would. The birds enliven the white desert in the winter backyard like nothing else can. In the last half dozen of years I was there, the hedge created a nice, almost woodland type of micro-climate. The backyard was nice and cool in even the hottest summer days, although there were mosquitoes too. The lawn only needed 3 or 4 mowings per season. Somebody else in a different part of the town had a dense hedge of the (also popular) 'Emerald Green' cultivar at maybe 20x the cost if not more. It has a darker green color, but not necessarily better looking. It got diseased or pest-infested, not sure which, the entire hedge died out completely within 3 seasons. It can happen with any mono-culture of course, but I think your best bet is also one of the cheapest solutions with hedge cedars harvested in the wild, emulating a local Thuja forest in your backyard. Good luck!...See MoreThuja occidentalis 'Smaragd'?
Comments (15)Foliage shown looks like that of 'Smaragd' and there are countless examples in my area with the same narrow, pointed crown outline. (But a body just has to look at photos of this cultivar on the web to see how the shape varies. Due probably to a combination of site conditions and position on stock plants where cuttings originated). Also in my area is a public planting that was determined using an instrument to be over 17 ft. tall in 2005 - that's 13 years ago. I have seen numbers of other generally similar columnar arborvitae here that were probably quite a bit taller but have not gone up to them to see if they had the characteristic 'Smaragd' foliage. One planting I noticed a few years ago in a country town was hugely taller, would have had to have been from a distribution significantly predating 'Smaragd' becoming highly prevalent on the local market in the 1980s. (This timing of commercial presentation also means that most - if not all - seen here are not anywhere near mature in age and size, for a long-lived evergreen conifer). I didn't take the time that day to drive over and look at it up close, haven't been back since. Trees asked about should be compared in person with known, labeled 'Smaragd' elsewhere in the same region to see how they stack up. Clipping a representative foliage spray and holding it next to 'Smaragd' at a local garden or nursery may be all that is needed to see if yours are the same....See Morecrushedpurple
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