Dave Epstein: Hi I’m Dave Epstein, this is Growing Wisdom and Wayne Mezitt here and he’s taking me in a tour through some of these great little trees, and these are really wonderful to use as a hedge. If you want to block out your neighbor, or you want to mitigate some of the wind. Tell me about some of the different types that folks you might want to use.
Wayne Mezitt: Well this arborvitae, called dark American arborvitae, is one of the best hedging plant for this region. It grows relatively quickly, it’s dark green all year, evergreen of course, and it makes a wonderful wind breaker and nice screen.
Dave Epstein: So, Wayne, where in the country could you use this?
Wayne Mezitt: It’s a zone 3 plant, so it’s good right up to the Canadian border even into Canada and as far as south as South Carolina.
Dave Epstein: And how fast will this grow?
Wayne Mezitt: I think about a foot a year, when they got establish sometimes even more.
Dave Epstein: How close do you want to plant them when you first put them in?
Wayne Mezitt: Well, it depends on what effect you want. If you want an immediate screen, you can plant them almost touching and then the first year they will fill right in.
Dave Epstein: We got some other ones over here they look taller and skinnier.
Wayne Mezitt: They are some narrower growing ones and some faster growing ones. It might be good choices on some properties to.
Dave Epstein: Let’s take a look at those. These are a lot bigger than the ones we just looked at.
Wayne Mezitt: This is a variety called a hetz winter green, which is the same species as the dark American arborvitae, except as you can see it is much faster growing. This is the same age as the one we were standing next to, it’s about 8 years old, but this one is over 10 feet tall, and that one is only about 5 feet tall and it grows narrower. If need a solid hedge, you want to plant this little bit closer together.
Dave Epstein: Will the deer eat these guys?
Wayne Mezitt: The deer do like arborvitaes. Let me show one variety they tend not to favor. This is the western arborvitae. This one grows a little bit faster than the dark American arborvitae, but slower than the hetz wintergreen.
Dave Epstein: Wayne, energy is one of those things we are all trying to conserve, and these trees can actually help with that, can’t they?
Wayne Mezitt: That’s right Dave, they cut the wind so that the heat lost from our home is reduce.
Dave Epstein: Some folks might have clay, sand, wet, dry. How versatile are these plants?
Wayne Mezitt: Arborvitae in general will take wet soils, but they also do fine on dry soils, and they even tolerate drought once they are established.
Dave Epstein: Well there’s a quick lesson on arborvitaes, certainly a great tree to use to create that beautiful screen if you want to block out a road, if you want to block out your neighbors, or you just want to help to mitigate some of those strong winds. Come back every week for all of our tips and helps at GrowingWisdom.com