Planting a hedge or screen is an investment – not just in money, but in time and effort. You wouldn’t make a financial investment without planning, and the same goes for planting too. While there are other important things, like soil preparation, correct planting techniques, after-care and good trimming, all of these count for nothing if the basic step of spacing has been neglected. Plant too close and your hedge will become thin at the bottom, with plants dying out as the strongest win in a battle for survival. Plant too far apart and you will first be waiting for ever for it to fill in, and always have an uneven face, with ins and outs, instead of that perfect flat surface that is the sign of a good hedge. So let’s consider how to space your plants correctly, thinking especially of that most popular evergreen of all for hedges and screens – Thuja Green Giant.

Basic Hedge Spacing Rules

For tight hedges – one-quarter of the mature width of your trees

For screening – a little more than half the mature width of your trees

For extra-solid screening – plant a staggered double row

In poor, drought-prone soil – reduce spacing by 25%

Remember to add room for the width too.

Spacing for formal, clipped hedges

Hedges are based on planting close, so that the trees grow together into a continuous mass. But you have to be careful. Sometimes it is recommended to plant root-ball to root-ball, that is, to pack the plants into a trench with the roots touching. Not only does this take a lot of plants, it results in a poor hedge. It does push the plants into growing tall, so you get the height you want quickly. This is probably where the idea came from, and for a few years it can look great, with a nice dense hedge. But after a few more years you will start to see problems. First, some plants will die, as the ones that were a bit more vigorous to start with begin to take over. You will suddenly see plants turning brown, and the foliage falling to the ground. Once they become bare you need to remove them, leaving gaps in your hedge – never what you wanted! Over time the spaces may fill in from the surrounding plants, but until that happens you have a really ugly hedge.

Even if you don’t get gaps, pretty soon the lower parts of the hedge stop growing, and it thins out just where you want it to be thick and green. Eventually the lowest branches begin to die, and your hedge loses that ‘green to the ground’ look that is so desirable.

Much better is to allow enough room for each plant to develop, while keeping them close enough that in a few years they merge into a solid wall. How close is that? If of course varies with the plant you are using. As a rule-of-thumb, check out the mature width of the plant. Taking Thuja Green Giant as an example, the mature width is 12 feet. So take 25-35% of that, and we have 3 or 4 feet. That is the ideal spacing. It’s that simple. The closer spacing will give you a solid hedge sooner, and the wider spacing will save you money by reducing the number of trees you need, but take a little longer to look full.

Spacing for informal rarely-clipped screens

The basic difference between a hedge and a screen is how often you clip it. Screening plants are rarely clipped, or not clipped at all. You might give them a trim or two as they develop, to build denser structure, and then a ‘touch up’ every few years, but that is about it. A hedge is going to be clipped at least once a year, and usually two or even three times, depending on how neat you are, and how much time you have. Especially in warmer areas, plants have a long growing season, so they will need more trimming.

With a screen, we want the plants to grow out naturally until they touch, so in theory we could plant at the same distance as their mature width, but that will take too long, so we usually go closer. Don’t go too close, as the plants will be pushed to grow tall, but stay thinner, which is a recipe for structural weakness as the screen gets taller. So half the mature width is a minimum, which in the case of Thuja Green Giant is around 6 feet. Again, if you are in a hurry you could reduce that to 5 feet, but don’t go any closer. You could stretch it to 8 or even 10 feet to reduce the cost, but if you need a visual barrier that will take a while at such a wide spacing.

A double row makes a denser screen

If you have plenty of room available, and you want a really solid barrier – perhaps for sound protection for example, then a double row is the way to go. This can be done for a hedge or a screen, and the method is to plant in two rows, at a wider spacing, with each plant staggered, so that the plants in one row sit in the spaces between the plants of the other row.  Even though the spacing is increased, this method does take more plants, but if a really solid barrier is your goal, then double rows are the way to go. For Thuja Green Giant, space the rows 3 feet apart for a clipped hedge, and 5 feet apart for an informal screen. In each row, a wider spacing of between 5 and 8 feet is good for a hedge, and 8 to 12 feet for a screen.

Planting double rows properly requires careful measuring and lay-out, otherwise you will lose the staggered effect. Careful layout is always needed really – that hedge or screen will be there a long time, and any spacing irregularities will glare at you for years to come!

My soil is very poor, and often dry

It is worth making allowances for poor soil conditions too. Rocky or sandy soil, especially if it is often dry, will reduce the growth of any plant, so you need to compensate for that by planting tighter. Reducing all the above spacings by 20 – 25% will do it, and give you something solid, even under poor conditions.

Don’t forget the width

A common mistake of inexperienced gardeners is to plant a screen or hedge right on the property line, or in a space too narrow for the plants. If your hedge impinges on neighboring property, they can cut it right back to the property line, so plant well inside it. Plant 6 feet inside for a large plant like Thuja Green Giant, or a little less for something narrower. That way all the plant will be on your property, and under your protection.

Similarly, when planning a hedge, especially along a path or driveway, set the back by 3 feet for a hedge and 5 feet for a screen, when using a large plant like Thuja Green Giant. Smaller plants will need a little less, but you don’t want your path to disappear in a few years – working with small plants can be deceptive, so do plenty of measuring!

A lot of the focus with caring for Thuja Green Giant is on the actual planting and establishment of new plants. This is important, because good establishment means durable plantings and a long life for your bushes. But after a few years your hedge, screen or specimen plants will be established in your garden, and questions come up about caring for these older plants. So in this blog we are going to focus on that – what special care and steps are best for older plants, particularly so that they go on to have a long, healthy life, and continue to play their vital role in your garden for years and decades to come.

Watering

It is obvious that newly-planted bushes need extra water until they settle in and send out their roots into the surrounding earth. But how long should this go on? What should we do for established plants if a long drought period arrives?

You should continue with watering new plantings throughout their first growing season. So if you planted in spring or early summer, it is best to water deeply once a week until the cold weather arrives, and winter rain or snow takes over. In the following year you should only need to water if there is a drought of three weeks, but if you have very sandy soil it pays to water regularly – perhaps every two weeks, for that second season. In later years you only need to think about watering if there has been no rain for a least a month, and in many soils your Thuja Green Giant plants will be unaffected by drought periods much longer than that.

The critical season for watering established plants is spring, not summer. Spring is when the major growth push takes place, and that is when the plants need plenty of water. So a spring drought can be damaging – although probably not fata – even to established plants. The new growth will be reduced, it will be thinner and not so green, and repeated over several years, the result will be a thinner plant. So if the weather turns dry in spring, as it so often can, a thorough soaking of your established plants will make sure they perform at their peak best.

Mulching also helps, and with hedges and screens leaving at least some of the clippings under the hedge is the easiest way to create a natural mulch for your plants. That layer of dead leaves will conserve moisture by reducing evaporation from the soil surface, as well as inhibiting weed growth. If you keep your hedge green right to the ground, then those clippings won’t show, and you save time by just blowing or brushing them underneath, instead of having to collect them up.

Fertilizer

Young plants always perform best with a regular fertilizer program, but after a few years it can become less important. If your natural soil is a loam or clay soil, it will almost certainly have good natural levels of plant nutrients, and most plants will grow well in it without any assistance. If you have a sandier soil this is not true, and if that sounds like your soil situation, a fertilizer program should be kept up indefinitely. For established plants granular fertilizers, and slow-release fertilizer are best. These require fewer applications a year, and slow-release forms usually need just one spring application, saving you a lot of gardening time. Compare that to liquid fertilizers, which need applying every two to four weeks throughout the growing season – this can become a real chore, especially over the years.

It is usually best to keep up annual fertilizer application even if you have good soil, when growing a hedge of Thuja Green Giant. Trimming removes nutrients that would naturally be re-cycled within the plant, so these need to be replaced for optimum growth. This is also another good reason to spread your clippings underneath your hedge, rather than throwing them away, as their gradual decay will eventually return the nutrients in them to the roots. Evergreen clippings are generally not good in a compost heap, so leaving them in place is the best and easiest way to dispose of them.

In summary, keep fertilizing your evergreens indefinitely if you trim them more than once a year or more, and in all situations if your soil is sandy. For plants left to grow naturally, keeping up fertilizer application is less important on most soils.

Trimming

If you have Thuja Green Giant, you probably decided when planting if you were going to trim them or not. Some people do underestimate the final size of this big plant, and trimming can become a necessity. If you suddenly see that your plants are too big, don’t rush out and cut them back hard. Like most evergreens, you cannot cut a branch back below where it has green shoots, and have it sprout back. If you get carried away and trim too hard you may destroy your hedge. If it really has become way too big, take back as much as you can, being sure to leave some green growth on every branch. After a year or so it will thicken up, and you can usually go back and get it even smaller than the first time. Better to take your time than destroy those old, established plants.

Even better is to anticipate a plant that is about to become too big, and trim it before, not after, that happens. It is much easier that way, and you will never have to trim so hard that your plants look bad for months, before filling out again.

With a hedge you should have trimmed regularly from an early age, but as your hedge matures it pays to anticipate problems. Keep those sides sloping inwards a little, so that the lower part stays green and thick, and if you live in an area with snow or ice storms, round off the top, keeping it as thin as you can, or the accumulation of ice and snow will break the top and open your hedge out. Watch for sections that seem to be yellowing, as branches can sometimes die back naturally. If you see this beginning, trim back those weak areas while they are still green, so that the surrounding foliage can spread into them. That way, if and when the weak branch dies completely, you will have a much smaller gap to fill in, and you will avoid the eye-sore of a gaping hole for several years. Sometimes too, trimming back an area that is weak will rejuvenate it.

Thuja Green Giant will live for many years, stretching into decades, and it can be maintained as a screen or hedge more or less indefinitely. The secret is to adjust your care techniques as they age, so you avoid problems down the road.

Screening is often high on the list of garden projects for many people, especially if you live in a built-up area. Evergreen screening is an effective and low-cost way to screen out unwanted noise, an ugly view, or neighbors, especially if you need screening above 6 feet. Tall fences are expensive, difficult to erect, and are often prohibited by city by-laws, but planting is not. You can put in screening plants that will grow pretty much as tall as you want, and a popular choice for that is Thuja Green Giant. There are lots of good reasons for this – perhaps the most obvious is the rate of growth – so let’s consider this choice in more detail, to see if it’s the right one for you.

Do You Have Enough Room?

Thuja Green Giant will grow, if unclipped, to a height of about 30 feet, and while that might take 30 years, it will be half that height in as little as 10 or 12 years. The bigger trees get, especially in a long screen, the more difficult and expensive it is to trim them, so the first thing to think about is the effect of planting a green wall, 20 feet or more in height? What about light into your home and garden? That will depend a lot on how close to your home the screen is going to be, and of course whether it is to the north or south, or some other compass position. Tall plantings to the north side will not cast a shadow, while in other positions it will. Consider too that the shadow will be longest in winter, because the sun is lower in the sky, and that may be just when you want that extra light.

Remember too that Thuja Green Giant will be up to 12 feet wide in time, again if left untrimmed, so consider how much ground space that is going to take up. Depending on your particular situation you could trim up the lower several feet, as they grow, creating trunks on your screen, which will free up ground-level space, but even then you should plant 6 feet or more from your property line, so that the trees are actually ‘yours’ completely.

For many medium to large-sized gardens, that kind of space is not an issue, but in a smaller garden you might want to consider something smaller, such as Emerald Green Arborvitae, which only grows to about 12 feet tall. It is hardy all the way from zone 2 to zone 7, making it the perfect choice for a smaller screen in colder areas.

How Fast Will They Grow?

Here we get into the reason for the enormous popularity of Thuja Green Giant – its growth rate. Young plants can add 3 feet a year – and even more sometimes. As they mature the growth does slow down, but still exceeds a foot a year. This can be seen with the original planting, where a plant at the National Arboretum in Washington reached 30 feet in 25 years. Tiny plants have been proven in trials to reach 10 feet in 7 years, faster than any other evergreen around.

Good soil preparation and a regular fertilizer program will give your plants the best start and the quickest growth rate, so go that extra distance and reap the rewards.

How Far Apart should I Plant?

Given how big Thuja Green Giant gets, you don’t need a lot of plants to make a screen. Depending on how quickly you want that screen to develop fully, you should plant 5 feet apart for a quick screen, and as much as 10 feet apart for something less solid, that will give the effect of screening without making a solid wall of green. If you do want solid, and you have enough room, then plant a double row. Allow 5 feet between the rows, and plant 8 feet apart in each row for a quicker screen, or up to 12 feet apart for something looser. Stagger the planting in each row, so that one plant stands in the middle of the gap in the other row, creating a tight zig-zag.

What About After-care?

Since Thuja Green Giant is not eaten by deer – at least not usually – and has no significant pests or diseases, there is nothing to do in that direction. The most important care is watering during the first growing season, which should be once a week. Don’t rely on showers or thunderstorms, as most of that water only wets the top inch or two in summer. Instead go for a deep soak from a gently-running hose on each plant, or by installing trickle pipe along the line. It’s important to keep the soil further away from each tree moist too, because you want to encourage the roots to grow outwards into a large volume of soil. That will happen much more if the ground around is temptingly moist, rather than dry.

After that vital first year you don’t need to give so much attention to your trees. Watch for dry periods in the second and third years and give those deep soaks again if the soil is dry below the top few inches. A quick dig around with a spade will show you that – just turn up a few inches of soil and feel for moisture. Increased watering during the early years will also accelerate growth, especially if combined with a fertilizer program.

In the early years liquid fertilizer is best – it gets straight to the roots and is taken up quickly. Feed each month for the best results, and that can be a little time-consuming, so after two or three years switch to slow-release granular fertilizers that only need one application a year, in spring. Choose a blend suitable for evergreens and look for Iron and Magnesium in the added micronutrients listed on the label. They will keep your screen a rich green color all year round.

Should I Trim?

Thuja Green Giant produces a dense plant without trimming, but as the early growth is fast and so more open, a light trim each year while the plants are small enough to reach will make it thicker much more quickly. You only need to take off an inch or two, so it has no real effect on the size or rate of growth, but it certainly makes for a dense screen early on.

Thuja Green Giant is the number one choice across much of the country, and it is probably the best choice for you too, but it pays to think it through first. Hopefully these notes will help you reach the right decision.

Hedge trimming season is well underway across the country, and after the rush of spring growth, if you haven’t trimmed your hedges yet, or if you did it a while back, now is the perfect time to do it. There is no doubt that the best way to have good hedges is to trim regularly, and the more you cut, the denser your hedges become. Everyone loves the look of freshly-trimmed hedges, so here are some tips on how to achieve that perfect look and keep your hedges healthy too.

• Keep your trimmers sharp – sharp tools give a clean trim
• Choose the right tools for the job – your trimmers should match the scale of the job
• Trim regularly – little and often to develop a strong branching structure
• Cut in all directions – branches should be horizontal, not run upwards for several feet
• Slope the sides inwards – the bottom needs light to stay green and thick
• Start trimming early – trimming a new hedge right from the start is the way to go
• Never cut below the foliage – many evergreens can’t sprout from bare wood
• Have a fertilizer program – hedges need regular feeding to keep growing strongly
• Water before trimming – don’t trim a hedge during a drought without watering first
• Stay safe – your personal safety with tools and ladders is always your top priority

Keep your trimmers sharp

That look of a smooth, green hedge is the result of clean cuts to the foliage. Ragged cuts turn brown, so your whole hedge looks brown and dull. Blunt trimmers – hand or power – are the most common cause of poor results, and they also slow you down, meaning multiple passes are needed, where a sharp trimmer would cut in one go. Although it’s possible to sharpen them yourself, most of us choose to have a professional do it. Have your trimmers sharpened before the first cut of the season, and if you have a lot of trimming, or do it frequently, you might need a second sharpen in the middle of the season.

Choose the right tools for the job

Trimmers come in many sizes, and the most common error is using a short bar for a large hedge. A long bar not only speeds up trimming, it makes it so much easier to achieve a flat surface. As well, decide what power-source to us. There is a big move today towards cordless electric, and with the new, lighter, quick-charging batteries, it makes a lot of sense. Freed from the hanging cord, and not surrounded by gasoline fumes, trimming becomes a much more pleasant experience. The result? You are more likely to trim more frequently, with improved results.

Trim regularly

The more often you trim, the denser and more durable your hedge will be. This is especially important with a young hedge – more on this later – but even for a mature hedge trimming twice a year, rather than the more common annual trim, makes an enormous difference. Three trims per year will really give you that top-quality look, if you can find the time.

Cut in all directions

The biggest mistake of a beginner when trimming their hedges is to run the trimmer in just one direction – usually upwards. This seems to be ‘natural’, but it causes long-term problems. You end up with a hedge that consists of long, upright branches, with foliage on the outside only. These easily break under snow or in strong winds, leaving big gaps that are hard to fill. A much better technique is to trim in all directions from day one. Upwards, downwards, and sideways too. By doing this you build a hedge with many more-or-less horizontal branches, with dense, twiggy ends that make the face of the hedge. They can’t be dislodged from the hedge, so it is so much stronger, and if one dies, it only leaves a small hole, that rapidly fills in from the surrounding branches.

Slope the sides inwards

To keep the lower part of your hedge healthy and green, it needs light, and it needs reduced competition from higher up. So your hedge should always be wider at the bottom than the top. Light reaches right down, and the bottom gets its share of food and nutrients. If you let the top grow fat the bottom will soon die, leaving you with a hedge that is full of gaps just where you see it most.

Start trimming early

A lot of people wait until their new hedge plants reach the final size they have in mind – 8 feet tall for example, and only then begin to trim.  If you do this you will always have a thin hedge, because there will be too few branches available to make that solid face. So begin early – as soon as you start to see new growth after planting – and trim an inch or two from the top and upper sides regularly. Don’t be afraid this will slow down growth significantly. It won’t, and your hedge will be so much better for it.

Never cut below the foliage

Another good reason to trim regularly is because hard cutting of most conifer evergreens doesn’t work. If you trim a branch below the point where it has green foliage, it won’t re-sprout at all and that branch will never grow again. Some plants are an exception to this, particularly yew trees, which will come back happily even from thick branches. But for cedar and cypress you can only remove a certain amount of growth – that why it can be better to replace a badly overgrown hedge, rather than attempt to salvage it.

Have a fertilizer program

Regular trimming removes green foliage, so to produce more your hedge plants have to grow more leaves. To do this quickly, and remain vigorous year after year, it pays to have a regular fertilizer program that you follow pretty closely. Use a method that suits your hedge – liquid feed when young, granular when older. Slow-release forms cost more but they save a lot of time, since most only need to be applied once a year. Choose a quality blend that is designed specifically for evergreen hedges, as it has the right balance of nutrients.

Water before trimming

Trimming during drought periods can be risky, as the sudden exposure of all those cut edges can cause desiccation and die-back. But sometimes we just have to do a job when we have the time to do it, and a long delay may leave hedges ragged and untidy. So if you have to trim when the ground is very dry, soak your hedge a couple of days before hand, so that the foliage is full of water. It will trim better too.

Stay safe

After all that, you want to come down from that ladder in one piece. So wear gloves to protect your hands, a hard-hat if you are up a ladder to any significant height. Make sure you have trimmers that have up-to-date safety features that protect you from injury, and if the weather is hot, make sure you stay hydrated.

Spring and early summer are peak times for plants to grow. Some plants only grow at that time and spend the rest of their time maturing buds for the following year. Others grow continuously, but more slowly and less vigorously, outside of that early peak period. When we grow plants in our gardens we often want to have maximum growth, so our screens and hedges mature rapidly, and so our gardens look full and lush. This means that even if we take good care of our soil, so that most of our plants need nothing more, in a few parts of the garden we want to boost growth with something extra.

Supplementary fertilizer is especially useful with plants where we take something away from the plant regularly. This could be fruit or flowers, but it also applies to lawns and hedges. Whenever we clip plants they need extra food to make up for that, and to replace it with new growth. This is where fertilizers come it – to give that extra fillip to those plants we stress by harvesting – even if that ‘harvest’ is just a bag of hedge clippings.

Evergreen bushes in particular – both broad-leaf and conifers – need a particular balance of fertilizer elements, so when you go to the store for hedge food, you see that the makers have created something the call ‘evergreen food’, or something similar. So what is special about the needs of evergreens, and what is in that bag? Why should you buy this one, and not something else? These are all good questions, and ones that lots of gardeners ask, so let’s try and answer them.

Young growth needs Nitrogen

By law, fertilizer bags are labelled with the amount of the three essential plant nutrients in them. This ‘fertilizer ratio’ is the three numbers you will find somewhere on the labelling, that looks like ’18-5-11’, or some other set of three numbers. First of all, you will see that it doesn’t add up to 100%. That doesn’t mean the rest of the bag is ‘filler’, as some people believe. Those numbers are the pure elements, and the rest of the bag is the other elements that are bound up with them to create the specific compounds used. Take a look at the ratio on a bag of evergreen fertilizer, and you will always see that the first number is the biggest. This is nitrogen, the element that plants need to make proteins and DNA, and especially the pigment called chlorophyll, which is the magic chemical plants use to trap energy from sunlight, and then turn it into sugars for growth. Right at the heart of every chlorophyll molecule are nitrogen atoms, and since green plants have lots of chlorophyll, they need lots of nitrogen to make it all.

All those clippings from your evergreens that you rake up or blow under the hedge are green, so you are taking chlorophyll away from the plant, and with it the nitrogen needed to make more. It’s that simple. Of course the plant also needs nitrogen for the structural proteins in its growth too, but chlorophyll is the big user, and so plants lacking in nitrogen will have pale green or yellowish leaves, instead of the rich, deep-green foliage we admire – and want.

In artificial fertilizers that first number is often big – between 7 and 20, depending on the formulation. If you look at organic fertilizers, it is rarely more than 4. That doesn’t mean these fertilizers are weaker, it is instead a result of the measuring system. That number is the amount of nitrogen in a form that the plant can use immediately. Much of the nitrogen in organic fertilizers is locked up in the material, and it takes the activity of bacteria and soil organisms to release it. This is why the top manufacturers of organic fertilizers are adding those special organisms to their fertilizer, to guarantee that all the goodness will be released. It’s a useful extra, especially in poor soils.

Potash is good too. . .

The third number in the formula is potash, and especially if you live in an area with colder winters, higher levels of that nutrient are very useful, as they make your evergreens more resistant to low temperatures. This is because potash (or potassium as it should be called) raises the pressure of the sap inside the cells, making the walls grow thicker and tougher, and so better able to resist low those icy days. It also makes them more resistant to pests, so its always good to see a higher level. If you are trying to choose one food over another, it makes sense to go for higher potash, if everything else is similar.

What else to look for?

You might wonder why some bags of fertilizer are more expensive than others. There are a couple of possible answers – for example it could be that one is slow-release, saving you going out and applying it several times – but another common reason is that some contain micro-nutrients as well as the ‘big three’. These are especially important to get top rates of growth, especially in evergreens that you are clipping regularly.

The most important ones to look for are iron and magnesium. These will be listed lower down and they must be shown on the bag if they are there. Both of them are involved in that chlorophyll molecule again – so vital for good growth. Iron is part of the enzyme system that makes chlorophyll – so low levels mean the factory slows down, and production falls below the necessary levels for top growth. Magnesium is right inside the chlorophyll molecule itself – surrounded by that nitrogen already mentioned – so it’s a raw material, and without enough, again, production will have to fall if the supply chain is disrupted.

Finally. . .

That’s it really. When checking the bag, look for a high first number – nitrogen – or if the material is organic, look for microbes to help release it. Also check if it contains iron and magnesium, and a higher potash number (the third one) helps too. All the rest is window dressing, but now you can make the best choices, and give your evergreens the best possible care.

So you just planted that row of Thuja Green Giant? Congratulations, it’s the perfect choice for a a screen or hedge – but now you are wondering what to do next. So here is a check-list of things to do and watch for with your new planting, so that it grows as fast as possible – and that is fast – and soon looks like the image you had when you bought them.

Summer Care of Thuja Green Giant

• Water regularly – soak deeply for several hours once or twice a week
• Mulch – it controls weeds and conserves moisture
• Feed it – liquid fertilizer is best for new plants
• Trim lightly – don’t wait for it to reach full size before starting to trim
• Relax – there isn’t much else to do with this easy-to-grow plant

Watering

The single biggest killer or growth-slower of new plants is lack of water. For the first season you need to keep watering close in to the stem of the plant, which is where the roots are. The biggest mistake with watering is to take the hose, with or without a spraying nozzle, and spend a few minutes spraying the ground. This water doesn’t penetrate very far at all, and the roots usually stay dry. Water needs to be applied slowly, so that it trickles down into the ground, and there are two ways to do that easily.

One easy way is to use an open hose, with the faucet turned down so it just trickles. Lay the hose a few inches from the stem and leave it for about half an hour. Check back and if the ground around the plant now looks thoroughly wet, move on to the next plant. If you do this once a week your plants should be really happy. At the height of summer, if there has been no rain and it is hot and windy, you may need to water twice a week – -check by scrapping back a bit of the soil to see if it is still damp or not.

The second method is a less work, so it’s a great choice if you have a longer hedge. Get a length of porous pipe and thread it back and forth around your plants, covering the ground with a sinuous line of pipe. You can use loops of coat-hanger wire bend over to anchor it in place and hold it down. It is best to do this before putting down mulch. This kind of pipe leaks all along its length, letting drops of water flow out onto the ground. How long it takes to soak the area depends on your soil, so you need to experiment, starting with an hour, and adjusting that time as needed. Adding a simple timer to the faucet makes it easy to do this automatically, even while on vacation, and once you set it up there is nothing more you need to do.

Mulching

If you didn’t do it when planting, put down a 2 to 3-inch layer of coarse organic material over the root zone as mulch. This could be bark chips, shredded wood, shredded leaves, garden compost, or even straw. Not only does it reduce or prevent the growth of weeds, mulch keeps the soil cool, stimulating root growth, and it slows down the loss of water directly from the soil. Keep it clear of the stems and foliage and cover an area a couple of feet wide at least. You will probably need to renew it after a couple of years – it depends on the type of material you used. Once the plants grow and spread outwards the leaves that fall inside the plant will act as natural mulch, and you won’t need to do it anymore. Remember not to dig old mulch into the ground, as more woody kinds of materials rob the soil of nutrients as they rot down.

Feeding

Your new Thuja Green Giant plants don’t yet have extensive root systems, so they can’t reach the nutrients in the surrounding soil. To keep them growing at their peak speed it is best to feed them for the first couple of years with liquid fertilizers, as these soak right down into the root ball, so the nutrients are available. The foliage can also absorb them directly, so some types can be sprayed directly onto the foliage. If you are unsure, use a half-strength mixture for the foliage, and full-strength on the roots. Once a month is usual, although you might get slightly better growth with half-strength every two weeks. Make the last feeding in mid-September, so the plants harden-off a little before winter comes. Choose a formulation that is blended for evergreen trees and that contains iron and other micro-nutrients. You will really see the difference with liquid feeding, no matter how well you have prepared the soil. That good soil preparation will pay off in future years, but it doesn’t have a big impact in the first season.

Trimming

Although you want maximum growth, you also want to develop good structure in a hedge, so that it is durable and lasts for many years. So if you are planning a hedge you will clip regularly, start doing it the first season. Just take an inch off the top a couple of times through the season, and a little off the sides too, especially in the upper part, so that your plants slope inwards a little. Don’t be tempted to trim 90-degree sides. It doesn’t work well, as the lower branches will become thin over time, and you will lose that great lush greenness right to the ground that is the mark of a top-quality hedge. These light trimmings as the plants grow produce a dense structure that is resistant to storm damage, and won’t break under the weight of snow. Stop trimming in mid-fall, so that the growth slows naturally before the winter comes, to eliminate the risk of the tips burning if the weather turns cold suddenly.

Relax

These are all easy jobs, that don’t take long, but they pay off in spades, with top-speed growth, rich, healthy green foliage, and the best-looking plants around. Good care in the early years of Thuja Green Giant helps it become the great plant you want – it’s easy, so enjoy the summer.

As spring slides into summer, those who didn’t do everything they planned for spring start to worry. Is it now too late? Will I have to wait until fall or next spring to do that planting in the garden? Specifically, I am planning to plant a screen or hedge of Thuja Green Giant – am I now too late?

The traditional planting seasons of spring and fall were connected to the traditional way that plants were grown in nursery fields. When they reached a saleable size, they were dug and usually wrapped in burlap, or put into temporary pots, before being sold and then replanted. These things must be done at the right seasons, and trying to dig and plant in summer was something doomed to failure, because a large part of the active root-system is left in the ground.

Nursery methods have changed a lot, and today plants like Thuja Green Giant are grown for most or all their lives in pots. This means there is no root disturbance when they are moved around, and they arrive at your home with 100% of their root system intact and healthy. So the simple answer to planting is that today we can plant almost all year round, as long as the ground is not frozen. There are some good reasons for not planting in the depths of winter, but the situation for summer is much easier. Summer planting is not only possible, but easy and successful, as long as you take some simple precautions. Let’s see what those precautions are, and then you will be ready to plant that screen or hedge you have been planning – no matter what season it is.

Tips for Summer Planting

• Prepare the area well, and water it thoroughly the day before
• Be sure the plants have been water well before taking them out of the pots
• Water deeply when planting
• Mulch the root-zone to reduce water loss
• Water close to the trunk every second or third day for the first weeks

Preparing the Planting Site

Just as for any other season, preparing the ground for planting should be top of your list. Most failures can be traced back to poor preparation. Digging a pot-sized hole in hard ground, and then pushing the plant into it, is always going to give bad results, even for tough plants. Instead, dig the whole row you are planting in, to a width of at least 3 feet. Incorporate plenty of rich organic material, to hold water and feed your plants.

If the ground is dry it may be hard to dig, so you should water the day before you dig or till. Once it is all ready to go, water thoroughly again the evening before you are going to plant.

Preparing the Potted Plants

When your new plants arrive, you may not be ready to plant right away. Remove all the packaging, and then place the plant in an area shaded from the afternoon sun. Plastic pots, especially black ones, absorb a lot of heat from the sun, and this damages the roots. If you do have to leave the plants in the sun, arrange them in a block so they shade each other, and then put something over the pots on the south and west side to protect them from direct sunlight. Burlap, some broad planks, mulch or loose soil are some possible materials you could use.

The biggest risk when planting in hot weather comes from handling plants with dry root balls. The soil can fall off, the roots rapidly become desiccated once outside the pot, and there is a real danger that the root ball will still be dry after you have planted and watered them. So always water the pots thoroughly the evening before planting. If you have to water them just before planting, go ahead – the only problem with that is the soil is wet and so makes more mess.

Water Deeply When Planting

You should still cut through the circling roots around the root ball in two or three places – it doesn’t hurt, and it encourages the roots to grow outwards, which is what you want. The commonest way people plant is to fill the holes completely and then water the area. A much better method, especially during summer weather, is to put back half to two-thirds of the soil, firming it down around the root ball. Then fill the remaining space with lots of water, and wait until it soaks down. This simple trick makes sure that plenty of water is available around the roots, where it is needed, not in the top few inches, where the roots can’t reach it. If you are forced to plant into dry soil, then do this soaking twice, so that the water spreads outwards too. Once the water has drained away, put back the rest of the soil, and once all the plants are in, go around and give them a final soaking.

Mulch the Root Zone to Conserve Moisture

Applying mulch over the root-ball zone of newly planted trees is always the right thing to do, but even more so in summer. It will keep the soil cool, which encourages root growth, and it reduces water-loss from the soil surface, reducing the risk of the soil drying out. Cover the soil further out than the width of the root-ball, because you want to create a cool, moist environment that the roots will want to grow into. Apply a layer 3 to 4 inches thick and keep it a few inches away from the stem and foliage.

Keep up the Watering

The biggest risk with summer planting is the rapid drying of the root-ball because of high rates of water loss from the foliage. Warm weather encourages growth, and it also increases the rate that water is lost from the leaves, especially from soft new growth. The only water available to newly-planted trees is in the soil that the roots are in, which is a small volume. So that moisture can be removed in a day or two. Water will be drawn into that soil from the surrounding earth, especially if you have firmed it down properly, but it may not happen fast enough. Because you see the soil surface looking damp, that doesn’t mean the hidden root-ball is. For the first three or four weeks, water every second or third day by letting water trickle down close to the stem of each plant. That way you will keep that root-ball damp. Water the surrounding soil too if it starts to look dry, because you want the roots to grow outwards, and they won’t grow into dry soil. Once the plants are established, you only need to water the whole area, as normal.

If you follow these simple tips, which are just good gardening habits, then summer planting of Thuja Green Giant is as easy as relaxing on those gorgeous summer days and watching your plants grow.

There is no question that among evergreens, Thuja Green Giant is the most recommended and the most popular of them all. When it comes to rising to the top of the poles, it’s a case of, “May the best plant win”. So what qualities does this plant have that allowed it to rise to the top? In answering that question, we can learn more about this plant, its suitability for your garden, and what it is about it that has proved so successful. Now read on. . .

The Origins of Thuja Green Giant

When we think of famous places for producing plants, Denmark is not a country that immediately comes to mind – yet it is there we begin our story. Dorus Poulsen was a keen amateur botanist and gardener, and in 1878 he started a nursery, growing and selling plants, near a grand manor house called Frijsenborg. There he became known for his rose breeding, and the Poulsen name was associated with quality and innovation. When Dorus retired in 1925 his sons took over the nursery, and it was probably one of them, who, in 1937, found a seedling that would eventually become famous. Here the picture is a little murky, because we don’t know if this was something produced by a breeding program – the Poulsen family were all keen on plant breeding – or just an accidental event that caught their keen eye. In any case, within a short time World War II would engulf Europe, and seedling evergreens were not of much importance in that life-or-death struggle.

It is 1967 before we pick up the trail again, now at the National Arboretum in Washington D.C. They received a shipment of plants from a Poulsen nursery – the company now had a number of branches- in Kvistgaard, north of Copenhagen. There were several different plants of Thuja evergreens, and these were planted out for observation in a nursery area. Several staff members noticed the speed of growth of this plant, which was very rapid in the early years, and in 25 years this plant was 30 feet tall – a remarkable achievement. In the early 1990s people were starting to pay attention

What is Thuja Green Giant?

So what was this plant? The botanists could see that it was a Thuja, a relative of the eastern Red Cedar, which is a common plant throughout the north-east. Because of its vigor and rapid growth, they suspected it was a hybrid – a cross between two natural species – but they didn’t know. The records didn’t help much, and beyond tracing it back to that Poulsen plant found in 1937, they didn’t have much to go by.

However they now had DNA analysis available, a great tool for solving these kinds of mysteries, and using that a team of scientists from the major American botanical gardens figured out what they were dealing with. This mystery plant really was something remarkable and never seen before – a hybrid between the Western Redcedar, Thuja plicata, and the Japanese Arborvitae, Thuja standishii.  One grows in Oregon and Washington state, and the other grows in Japan. We may never know exactly what happened in that nursery in Denmark 80 years ago, but it produced a trans-pacific hybrid, full of what plant breeders call ‘hybrid vigor’.

Why Does Thuja Green Giant Grow So Fast?

When two plants are bred together, all the best forms of the many genes it has hide the bad forms, that naturally accumulate over the millennia. So a hybrid plant is running on all cylinders perfectly, creating this hybrid vigor, and this is the simple explanation of why Thuja Green Giant grows as fast as it does. Growth rates of over 3 feet a year have been seen in young plants. In a trial at the University of Arkansas, tiny plants grew 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide after only 7 years. This was a trial of many hedging plants, and the fastest was the Green Giant. This is the major reason for the popularity of this plant – its growth rate. If you need large evergreens in a short time, then Thuja Green Giant is the number one choice – right on top of the list.

Deer Don’t Touch It

Deer are a serious problem for some gardeners, and they can and do decimate plantings. Some kinds of Thuja are popular winter food, and a hedge or screen can and is often stripped completely of its lower branches – ruining the work of decade or more.

Deer are very unpredictable, and when driven by hunger will eat just about anything, so it’s impossible to make an absolute statement, but the evidence is that Thuja Green Giant is almost always left alone. Spraying with a deer repellent in winter, especially when plants are young, is always a good idea, but compared to other Thuja, deer resistance is another reason why Thuja Green Giant is at the top of the polls for large evergreens.

Lack of Pests and Diseases

That hybrid vigor that produces such rapid growth also protects Thuja Green Giant from any serious pests or diseases. This is unlike some other evergreens, and one reason for the success and popularity of this plant is its usefulness in replacing old hedges that have become diseased

How Winter-hardy is Thuja Green Giant?

If you live in zone 5, or anywhere warmer, then there is no question that this plant will thrive, and it will survive winter in a perfect green state. If you have heavy snow, then any evergreen needs to be trimmed from time to time, so that it doesn’t have long side branches that can bend and break under wet, heavy snow. But as for winter burn, browning, or the bronzing that plagues some evergreens, those will not be a problem.

If you live in colder zones, then Emerald Green Arborvitae is a better choice. It’s hardy to zones 2 or 3, making it a top choice. At the other end of the scale, if you live in zone 9, or in a hot, dry area like Arizona, then the Italian Cypress is the best choice. It’s still fast-growing, and it is acclaimed for its drought-resistance.

Looking at these things -from growth rate to hardiness – it’s easy to see why Thuja Green Giant has risen to the top of the list for larger evergreens, whether you need an informal screen or a trimmed hedge. Just remember that it does get large, so don’t use it for hedges less than 6 feet tall, or plant it in narrow spaces, or too close to buildings. It’s a great plant, but sometimes something smaller is a better choice!