Corona's Principles of Planting How to Guide

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PLANTING ANNUALS, PERENNIALS, AND CONIFERS
or scale-like foliage. Most conifers are evergreen,
which makes them highly desired in the landscape —
especially in snowy winter scenes — for screening,
for windbreaks and simply for a beautiful sculptural
shape. They can be used as either specimens in the
landscape or as hedges.
Conifers do best in full sun – up to 6 hours a day; they
also like free-draining soil, so amend heavy soils as
described earlier. Otherwise plant conifers as you
would trees and shrubs.
Conifers for hedges
When selecting plants, there are certain things to look
for that indicate quality:
• Be sure to consider both the mature width and the
mature height of hedge plants. Columnar-shaped
conifers, such as American arborvitae (Thuja
occidentalis) or types of yews (Taxus species), are
ideal hedge plants. Keep an eye on the suggested
mature height; the taller the hedge the more
work keeping it pruned so that it doesn’t become
top-heavy where you can no longer reach, or to
completely dwarf the site.
• In a container-grown plant, it should be centered in
the pot, indicating a evenly-growing root system.
If you begin with young, well-formed plants where
stems and shoots are growing evenly around the
trunk from its tip to its base, the hedge will grow
more fully and uniformly.
Planting a hedge
Having decided where the hedge is to be sited, gather
up some long bamboo canes as close to the height
of your proposed barrier as possible. Poke them into
the ground every few feet. Then stand back. Will the
hedge do the job you want it to do when it’s reached
your goal? What about shade? How much will it cast
– you can approximate this from the length of shadow
cast the canes.
Hedge plants should be planted close together on a
uniform distance taken from trunk to trunk, referred to
as “centers”; the nursery should be able to advise you.