Evergreen bones for every season. Conifers hold their needles and their shape when the rest of the garden has gone bare, giving structure, shelter, and deep green (or blue, or gold) through the darkest months of the year.
A refined and rarely offered evergreen from New Zealand, Podocarpus acutifolius forms a dense, finely textured silhouette of short, sharp-tipped leaves that give the plant a crisp, architectural presence. Heat-tolerant and well suited to the southern United States when properly sited, this uncommon conifer offers structure, restraint, and year-round depth in the landscape.
A conifer of mist and mountains, Podocarpus parlatorei comes from isolated cloud-forest ridges just east of the Andes in Bolivia and northwestern Argentina. Rare in the wild and scarcely seen in cultivation, this CITES-listed species is one of the most unusual evergreen introductions Woodlanders has ever offered.
A Victorian-era English selection of one of the great trees of North America. The species, Thuja plicata, the western red cedar, is the dominant conifer of the Pacific Northwest coastal rainforest, the tree that towers 150 to 200 feet above the forest floor in old-growth stands of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and northern California, with individual specimens documented at over a thousand years old. To the Coast Salish, Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka'wakw, and other Pacific Northwest Indigenous peoples, western red cedar is the Tree of Life: the wood used for longhouses, dugout canoes, totem poles, and ceremonial regalia; the bark woven into baskets, mats, capes, and dress; the whole tree a structural and cultural foundation for thousands of years. That natural rot-resistance comes from the same volatile terpenoids that give the crushed foliage a sweet, cedary fragrance, the smell of the Pacific Northwest forest itself.
A dwarf form of one of Japan's legendary Five Sacred Trees of Kiso, the goboku no kinbatsu, a select group of conifers protected by feudal law for centuries, reserved for imperial residences and temple construction, where commoners caught poaching the wood faced execution. The species, Thujopsis dolabrata, is endemic to Japan and known there as asunaro, a name that translates beautifully and a little wistfully as tomorrow it will become hinoki, a nod to the tree's resemblance to the more revered hinoki cypress, forever almost but not quite the more famous tree. Thujopsis is the sole species in the entire genus.
Cephalotaxus harringtonia 'Fastigiata' is the columnar Japanese plum yew, a needle-leaf evergreen of distinctive upright form, the dark green, glossy needles arranged in dense whorls around stiffly erect branches like a green bottlebrush held vertical. An ancient Japanese and Korean clone, the plant occasionally throws a shoot of the flat, two-ranked foliage typical of the wild species, a quiet reminder of the parent.
Cephalotaxus harringtonia 'Prostrata' is the spreading Japanese plum yew, a low, wide-growing evergreen prized for lush, dark green, needle-like foliage and an easy way with shade. Where the species and its columnar forms stand upright, 'Prostrata' lays out horizontally, three or four feet high and twice as wide, layering into a handsome evergreen groundcover or low border.
Juniperus virginiana, the eastern red cedar, is a tough, aromatic native conifer of eastern North America, found from Canada to the Gulf and famous for fragrant, moth-repelling wood and a pioneering habit on poor, dry, and abandoned ground. 'Lawrenceville' is a narrow, upright selection, a slender column of dense, dark evergreen foliage with short branches held close to the trunk, ideal where vertical form is wanted in a small footprint.
Hardiness
Zones 3–9
Light
Full Sun
Height
15–25 ft.
Spread
4–8 ft.
Bloom
Blue
Plant type
Conifer
Traditional use
respiratory support, topical applications, general wellness
There is something almost meditative about Nageia nagi. Named from the Japanese word nagi, meaning both calm and to mow down one's troubles, this ancient conifer carries a quiet gravitas few trees can match. At the Nyakuoji Shrine in Kyoto a sacred nagi tree has stood for centuries, believed to cut through hardship and leave peace in its wake, and sprigs of nagi have long passed between lovers as a token of steadfast devotion, the leaves too tough and resilient to tear easily, a metaphor that has endured for a thousand years.
Podocarpus macrophyllus, the yew pine, is a familiar evergreen conifer grown as a shrub or small tree across the southern United States, valued for dense, dark, strap-like leaves several inches long and a tidy, upright frame. 'Okina' is the variegated form, a relatively recent introduction from Japan, whose new growth emerges creamy white before settling to soft green.
This low-growing form of Podocarpus macrophyllus is a compact, spreading evergreen with flat, needle-like leaves that spiral tightly around the stems. Where the ordinary yew pine climbs into an upright shrub or small tree, this selection stays low and horizontal, building a dense, glossy green mat of steady year-round texture and structure.
