Being Labor Day weekend, I knew I could expect the weather to change. Sure enough, it was 51 degrees when I came to work this morning, and I hear I can expect 48 degrees overnight.  Our British born Christine who works weekends came in today in shorts-and a sweatshirt-grumbling about how “perishing cold” it was. The onset of fall gets me to thinking about reworking the garden-so it might be better next season. But fall also has a way of bringing the issue of planting evergreens to the fore-as we have a very long leafless winter season ahead. Norway spruce thrive in our climate; should you have the space, they are brave and comforting against the winter skies.Â
There are many cultivars of thuja; they can be very effective in providing year round privacy. Thuja Smaragd, or Emerald Green arborvitae, takes up little space on the ground compared to the big growing pines. Thuja Nigra is bigger growing, but still fairly vertical. I could not do without them in my small urban garden. In this landscape, thuja Pyramidalis provides privacy on a grand scale.  Â
Taxus media “Moon” is an upright growing yew that rarely needs any side pruning. Taxus media “Hicks” is the old standby for vertical yews, but they are much more open in growth. Choosing the right cultivar of evergreen for your purpose is important. The natural habit of a plant  is a vastly superior to that too heavily pruned look.   Â
I use Green Velvet boxood almost exclusively-as it keeps its color and performs well even when we have terrible winters. It tolerates shearing well. Should I need boxwood that grows taller, or bigger than 3′ by 3′, Buxus microphylla var koreana is a good choice. It is much more open growing than Green Velvet, but sometimes the eventual scale of a plant is the most important issue. The foliage of Green Mountain boxwood is very close in appearance to Green Velvet, and matures at 4′ by 3′. Vardar Valley boxwood has a beautiful blue cast. Faced down with Japanese painted ferns-really beautiful. Boxwood is handy as a companion planting to deciduous shrubs. It helps to relieve that twiggy look, or that cut to the ground perennial garden look-in the winter. Â
There are no end of interesting and visually arresting cultivars of dwarf evergreens. Though I am neither a connoisseur nor collector, I know a beautiful and well grown evergreen when I see one. People who love dwarf conifers really really love them. Designing a landscape for a collection is great fun. For each specimen plant or plant grouping I may choose a companion evergreen that will showcase that specimen. The juniper “Calgary Carpet” is a juniper I can take to. This prostrate evergreen has needles with a silvery sheen that is very attractive.    Â
Given my druthers, I would only plant blue needled evergreens far in the distance. Everything at a great distance in a landscape has that far away blue cast. The color blue seems so natural-far off. But creating an informal tapestry of various shades of green can be very appealing.  Â
This old dwarf scotch pine on standard rules this view-never mind a climbing hydrangea  that has been draped over this wall for decades. All of the attending horizontal elements make much of the singular shape of this specimen evergreen.Â
The most commonly planted evergreens in my area represent but a fraction of what is available to plant. In the above photograph, Pinus Flexilis “Vanderwolf’s” on the left, and Pinus Heldreichii Leucodermis further down the drive.  One of the nurseries where I buy plants lists 42 cultivars of Chamaecyparis alone. This is more than enough to replace one’s regret at the passing of the summer with an interest in making some new friends.
Would not the silhouette of this tree, trained and grown parallel to a wall, get your attention?  Even out of leaf, it is striking. You are looking at an espalier- a tree trained to grow in only two dimensions.  In the late 1600’s, Fr. Legendre, a monk living in Hanonville France was in charge of his monastery’s garden. His fruit trees were bedevilled by late frosts that killed the fruiting buds. Noticing that the fruit trees planted closest to the monastery walls sustained the least damage, he began planting his fruit trees as close to the walls as possible. As wall space was limited, he began shearing his trees, so as to provide room for all the varieties he wanted to grow. Amazingly, the drastically sheared trees produced heavier yields than unpruned trees in the field. His book, Palmette Legendre, was published shortly before his death in 1684. This book is the earliest known text regarding the science of growing espaliers. These trees, pruned  flat, spare, and parallel to a wall, had fewer cultural problems, took up little space, and were beautiful to boot.
Espaliered fruit trees look like no naturally growing tree . Though no tree expert would advise this kind of planting, pruning and shaping, Father Legendre’s ideas practices enabled ample fruit for everyone living at his monastery. Sometimes the hand of man comes to good end in the environment. This very early spring picture shows an espaliered tree, grown in the candelabra shape. It would be beautiful, grown on a blank wall-never mind the fruit. Training trees to grow in two dimensions became a gardening art form-even for those who had no need to feed many from a very small plot of land. 
I make a special effort to offer exceptional espaliered trees to my clients.  My grower of choice is of French descent, and his espaliers take my breath away. I drive a day’s length to see and review his espaliers.  He grows in the traditional way, and only has a few trees to offer for sale every year. He sells no trees that are not at least seven years old; his big trees are much older. He pots his trees, and then sinks the pots in the ground.   Note that the trunk of this tree is positioned to the back of its pots-his trees are easy to plant close to a wall.  
Their winter appearance is architectural.  The American landscape is fundamentally based on big spaces; we have eight lane highways and driveways 22 feet wide.  This makes this particular dose of French editing all the more refreshing. People who come to my store are invariably interested in their history and forms.
My grower trains some of his espaliers in a form not existing in the classical literature. This framed heart is entirely his invention; how I love this. It has a distinctly American feeling; he has taken his classical training, and gone beyond. 
This informal heart espalier enchanted one of my clients. I call it the wild at heart espalier. As she had no room in the ground, we built her a box for her deck, insulated to slow the freeze, and delay the spring thaw; this apple tree is thriving. We heap up the compost after the ground freezes, and we uncover it in the spring; so far, so good.
Not all espaliers are fruit trees. The art of training espaliered trees has extended to many trees tolerant of this treatment. This Bradford pear makes a big statement as an espalier. Any lonely wall would be all the happier for this tree planted on it.
This series of trees is known as a Belgian Fence. You can see that individual trees were topped low to the ground as whips, encouraging branching in both directions. The branches of these trees are trained in a diamond pattern; what a beautiful living ornament for a long wall, or a free standing fence.
Yesterday I discussed all the grading and stonework that was necessary for this project; what a relief it was to finally be putting plants in the ground! The neighborhood association belatedly decided this wall needed to be screened by plants. They apparently did not permit walls in front yards. So I planted a slew of Annabelle hydrangeas; my clients have a great view of the wall in the winter.
The upper level we did screen from the street. Houses that sit high afford little in the way of privacy. I interspersed five little leaf lindens in a hedgerow of techny arborvitae. The techny’s are dense, and slow growing.  They also tolerate some shade, although the plan was to keep the lindens pruned.
Lindens belong to that group of trees that do not mind shaping. I have seen old ones not much taller than 15 feet, with densely foliated heads. My lindens at my store are boxed; they have been pruned into rectangular shapes. They are a hedge high above ground. They greatly soften the appearance of the building-originally a machine shop built in the 1940’s.  These lindens I wanted to keep in scale with the house.
The house seems to sit lower than it once did. Though the front door of the house is off center, the landscape balances the space.  The granite walled portion of the facade reads as a centerpiece, of which the front door is a part.  The landscape making much of the bluestone staircase centers the view.
There were two issues driving the design of the upper level. How could the sidewalk gracefully turn towards the front door? The walk from the street now empties into a large rectangle of gravel; its color and size makes it read as the dominant element. The taxus viridis, naturally a very columnar yew, is planted in rows perpendicular to the house. This distracts the eye from the fact that the property in the background is dropping downhill. The techny arborvitae at the end are actually much taller than the yews-but everything reads  about the same height. In time, the yews could be topped level with the horizon, thus minimizing the slope down to the west.
Eight years later, the landscape has begun to grow in. This front courtyard is private, and simple. 
