How to Design Conifer Gardens

Conifer or cone-bearing plants come in a vast array of sizes, shapes and colors. While many home landscapes include at least a few conifers, it's more unusual to see whole garden beds dedicated to these versatile plants. Well-designed conifer gardens include a variety of shapes and sizes of greenery, usually focused on one outstanding tree or shrub. Choose plants proportional to the size of your home and surrounding landscape, and your conifer garden will be a beautiful, integral part of your landscape design.

Garden hose or rope
Graph paper and pencil
Measuring tape
Camera
Spade or shovel
Mulch

Instructions

- 1
  Select an area for your conifer garden in full sun, if possible, for the widest variety of plant material. The site also needs good drainage, since few conifers tolerate constantly wet soil.
- 2
  Use your garden hose or rope to mark the outline of your garden bed. Use big, graceful curves for the planting bed unless your home landscape already has formal, geometric lines.
- 3
  Measure the garden bed and the surrounding area. Create a scaled drawing with the graph paper, including any existing plants or structures that will remain as part of the new design. Also note any other large objects, such as garden sheds or background trees, that will be in your line of sight when you're looking at the garden or that cast shade on the area. Additionally, mark both underground and overhead utilities.
- 4
  Take photos of the area from all directions. Your new conifer garden needs to be in proportion to landscape elements already installed, and the photos will help you visualize the garden in 3D.
- 5
  
  Conifers come in many shapes and sizes.
  
  Make copies of your scaled drawing, and start roughing in groups of plants -- don't worry about specific varieties at this point. Include a variety of plant shapes in your conifer garden. Tall plants like pines (Pinus) and large arborvitae (Thuja plicata) make good focal points, but you'll want rounded or cascading shrubs to contrast with them and low, spreading conifers for the front of the bed.
- 6
  
  Too many golden conifers make the border look spotty.
  
  Choose individual varieties that fit your design criteria and that grow well in your area. Include a mix of colors and textures, but be conservative with yellow-tinged evergreens. One or two varieties of golden conifers will add interest to the garden design.
- 7
  Install your plants, spacing them far enough apart to accommodate their mature size, even if the bed looks sparse at first. Leave some space between groups of plants so that you can walk in the bed for maintenance. Spread a 2- to 3-inch layer of organic mulch, not gravel, over the entire bed to keep the soil moist and the plant roots cool.

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