How to Grow Conifers

Conifers are a low-maintenance addition to landscapes and container gardens. Before you purchase conifers for your lawn or landscape, examine the surrounding area for conifers that are already thriving in your climate and soil.

Research unique and rare cultivars of the common species in your area. Certified rare conifer nurseries provide hundreds of cultivars and varieties with variegated foliage, unique branching habits, and distinct cone colors.

Site Requirements

Most conifers prefer full sun and rich, acidic, well-drained soil. However, many species that can tolerate poor soils, high pH, salt, drought, and wind. The only condition conifers cannot tolerate is wet, soggy soil (except for the bald cypress).

Planting

Plant conifers the same way you plant other landscape plants. Dig a hole twice the size of the root ball, and gently pull the plant out of the container. If the plant is balled & burlapped, cut away the wire at the top and pull back the top of the fabric (to remove or not remove the burlap? We answer that question on our planting page). Fill in the hole and gently tamp down the soil.

For best results, plant the conifers in early spring or in the last few weeks of fall.

Pruning

Pruning can be as relaxed or involved as you want. Most conifers perform just fine with no pruning, except to remove dead or diseased wood.

The most common and helpful type of pruning is candling, or removing the first few inches of new growth in the spring. This will encourage dense foliage and keep the mature size in check.

Some conifers, like yews and junipers, respond well to shaping. These plants can be pruned into globes, spirals, or formal hedges, but before you pull out your hedge trimmers, read our pruning page for the best way to create artistic conifer shapes.

Conifers add seasonal interest and a unique structural element to landscapes, container gardens, and even specialty plantings like fairy gardens and railroad displays.

Browse our pages on unique cultivars to add specimen plants to your landscape, and visit our planting, pruning, and site requirement pages to learn more about how to care for conifers.

Deciduous Conifers

Deciduous conifers are less common than their evergreen counterparts, but they add a unique, structural component to the landscape.

Deciduous conifers lose their needles in the fall, revealing unique bark textures and branching patterns, which draws special attention to new growth in the spring.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides ‘Miss Grace’

The Miss Grace dawn redwood is a beautiful, elegant, weeping deciduous conifer that captures the silhouette of an art nouveau woman. The needles are green, but they fade to a bright orange in the fall. As the needles drop, they reveal textured, peeling bark.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides Miss Grace deciduous conifer weeping green orange

Metasequoia glyptostroboides ‘Miss Grace’

Metasequoia glyptostroboides ‘North Light’

The North Light dawn redwood is a small, globose conifer with reddish brown bark. The needles are a beautiful butter yellow with pink undertones.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides Schirrmann's Nordlicht deciduous conifer globose yellow

Metasequoia glyptostroboides ‘North Light’

Taxodium distichum ‘Peve Minaret’

The Peve Minaret bald cypress has a broad, upright, conical shape with green leaves that turn a burnt orange color in the fall. The tree can be pruned to have a more formal, columnar shape. This species is excellent for wet sites.

Taxodium distichum Peve Minaret Bald Cypress deciduous conifer green orange upright conical

Taxodium distichum ‘Peve Minaret’

Larix decidua ‘Krejci’

This dwarf European larch has an odd, sporadic growth structure that seems to defy nature at times. Branches twist and curl, sometimes even making a 90o turn with random tufts of needles at the junctures. This cultivar truly shines during the winter, when the needles fall and reveal the eccentric branching structure.

Larix decidua Krejči deciduous conifer branching structure twist

Larix decidua ‘Krejci’

Larix decidua ‘Puli’

The Puli European larch has thin, heavily weeping branches that form lime green needles in the spring, which eventually fade to dark green and then a rich, golden yellow in the fall. This tree has an elegant, waterfall appearance when the trunk is staked, but it can also be left to creep along the ground and form a soft, mounding shape.

Larix decidua Puli deciduous conifer weeping green yellow mounding

Larix decidua ‘Puli’

Ginkgo

The ginkgo is a truly unique and majestic species. Ginkgos are broadleaf, deciduous trees with fan-shaped leaves that range from lime green to a creamy yellow. In the fall, leaves will turn a brilliant gold color before falling and revealing the strong branching structure.

Ginkgos are not conifers. Conifers and ginkgos are both gymnosperms, but they belong to different scientific classes.

Ginkgo biloba tree green fan-shaped broadleaves

Ginkgo