Ask Mr. Smarty Plants

There are lots of native plants that would make great evergreen conifers for your garden. Let’s start first with a list of native plants for your area. Take a look at the Native Plant Database on the www.wildflower.org website and put in the following search criteria: State = Ohio, habit = tree, duration = perennial, light requirement = sun, soil moisture = moist, leaf retention = evergreen  Then select the height you desire. Most conifers would be in the 12-100 foot range.  This will generate a list of 3 plants for you to investigate.

They are:

Abies balsamea (balsam fir) The only fir native to the Northeast, with narrow, pointed, spirelike crown of spreading branches and aromatic foliage.

Pinus virginiana (Virginia pine) Virginia pine is a straggling, scrubby evergreen, 15-40 ft. tall, becoming flat-topped with age. Outstretched limbs spring irregularly from the reddish-brown trunk. Cones are sharp to the touch due to prickly-like appendages. Short-needled tree with open, broad, irregular crown of long spreading branches; often a shrub.

Thuja occidentalis (arborvitae) In a crowded environment, this tree is slender and not well-branched. In the open, it improves in form and density. The evergreen can be single- or multi-trunked and columnar or conical in shape. Eastern arborvitae can grow 40-60 ft. tall, but under cultivation will probably be no taller than 30 ft. Branches end in flat, spreading, horizontal sprays of fragrant, dark-green foliage which turns yellow-green or slight brown in winter. Resinous and aromatic evergreen tree with angled, buttressed, often branched trunk and a narrow, conical crown of short, spreading branches.

Probably the first North American tree introduced into Europe, it was discovered by French explorers and grown in Paris about 1536. The year before, tea prepared from the foliage and bark, now known to be high in vitamin C, saved the crew of Jacques Cartier from scurvy. It was named arborvitae, Latin for tree-of-life, in 1558. The trees grow slowly and reach an age of 400 years or more. The lightweight, easily split wood was preferred for canoe frames by Native Americans, who also used the shredded outer bark and the soft wood to start fires. Today, the wood is used principally for poles, cross-ties, posts, and lumber. Cedar oil for medicine is distilled from the twigs.