Thuja Green Giant has a well-deserved reputation as one of the very best screening and hedging plants for your garden. Ideas for this plant shouldn’t stop there – it has so much more to offer, since it is also a great plant to use around the garden as part of your planting schemes. Its evergreen foliage means it is attractive in every season, its strong upright lines makes it a great accent plant, and its rapid growth and reliability makes it a real workhorse in building a great garden.

In Foundation Planting

Surrounding the house with plants is a great way to join your house and garden together. Plants against the walls protect you from heat and cold, reducing heating and cooling costs. They soften the hard outlines of architecture and create a flow of green from the walls right out into the garden. Although flowering plants are excellent around the house, evergreens give a look of permanence and longevity to your property, and should be used liberally in your foundation planting. Trees are not a good choice, because their root systems can damage foundations, but even large evergreens have relatively small roots, and can be planted close to walls without causing damage.

Thuja Green Giant is the perfect choice for tall blank walls, since it has a good height without being very wide. It will grow up to the roof-line of a two-story home, but it won’t overshadow it, or become a danger during storms. Tuck one into a corner to create a curving line around the house – perfect for smaller plants to go in front. Plant one on either side of the front door to create columns of green to frame your entrance and create a real ‘presence’ to your entrance. During the holiday season, you can wrap them in lights for a true festive feel.

Many people like to clip the plants around their home into more formal shapes – it is a good way to make a transition from the straight lines and right-angles of a building into the natural rounded shapes of most garden plants. You might choose a simple upright conical shape, or pyramids, flame shapes, large balls or even cubes or spirals. With its rapid growth rate, Thuja Green Giant will quickly grow to the size you want, and it is easy to clip, quickly developing the shape you are looking for. If you have plenty of room, try grouping three plants together and clipping them to three different heights to make an attractive grouping.

Around the Garden

Out in the main part of the garden there will often be awkward spots to deal with. These can be corners, where you don’t want something wide that will hang over neighboring properties, but that will fill the corner and perhaps hide a less-than-attractive feature. Thuja Green Giant has the potential height to hide that feature and make a bold statement, as well as the width to fill a blank corner without spreading widely and crowding out either neighbors or your own garden. In a large garden you want to fill space effectively, and often reduce the total area, so that your flower beds stand out more, and you garden needs less high-level maintenance. Well place groups of Green Giants in the back areas will do just that – creating a visual backdrop to your detailed work with flowering shrubs and plants.

Allow Enough Room when Planting

Perhaps the biggest single issue for beginner gardeners is understanding the final size of the plants the put into the garden. Thuja Green Giant is an upright plant, but it does need enough room for its width. So here is a useful way to check you are leaving enough room. Take a piece of string. Make a loop that will fit loosely around the pot. Measure out from the trunk about 4 feet along the string and tie a stick at that point. Now place your new tree on the ground where you would like it to be, and circle around it with the stick. The area you go around is the size of your tree at 8 feet wide, which is what it will be in about 10 years. Have you got enough room? If not, move it around a bit until you have it in a suitable spot. When you first plant the tree it may look like there is far too much space, but with such a fast growing tree you won’t have to wait long for that space to be filled with a terrific plant.

A Final Word

So don’t limit your thinking about Thuja Green Giant to hedges and screens. This fast growing and vigorous tree is a great plant for your gardening too, and makes a bold statement wherever you plant it.