The five you run into most are Eastern white pine, Colorado spruce, American arborvitae, eastern red cedar and American holly. Four of them are needled conifers. The fifth one, holly, is a broadleaf tree that sets fruit only on female plants. These examples of evergreen trees are the common evergreen species you will find at most garden centers in the East. All five keep their leaves through winter.
The arborvitae row along my driveway closed into a screen you can't see a car through. Each of those trees is headed for 35 to 40 feet (11 to 12 m) tall and 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 m) wide, and I set them closer together than that. They went in two years after the white pine at the corner, and the pine still stands taller than the whole row put together.
Those evergreen tree sizes are the reason these five make the list. You get a holly at 15 to 20 feet that fits beside a front step, and a spruce that can pass 90 to 100 feet and swallow the house behind it. The five split on water too. Spruce and fir want more of it and do well in a watered lawn, while pines and junipers, red cedar included, hold up better on dry sites. Every needled tree here still wants soil that drains, so skip the soggy low spot in your yard.
Each one fits a different job in your yard. White pine and Colorado spruce belong on a big open lot, because a spruce headed for 90 to 100 feet next to a one-story house looks wrong long before it is done growing. Arborvitae is your screen plant, narrow at 10 to 15 feet across and dense from the ground up. Red cedar handles the rough strip along a road or a fence line. Holly stays small enough for a bed by your front door.
Holly has one catch the plant tag leaves off. The plants are either male or female, and you need about one male for every three to four females to get fruit at all. Red cedar is the opposite of fussy and takes poor soil that would finish off a spruce. White pine carries five soft needles per cluster, each one 3 to 5 inches (8 to 13 cm) long, and that is the quickest way to put a name on it.
Check two things before you pay. Match the hardiness zone first, since holly stops at Zone 6 while spruce, arborvitae and red cedar hold on down to Zone 3. Then match the water. Put your spruce where the sprinklers reach and give the pine or the red cedar the dry corner nobody waters, and neither tree spends its life fighting the site. Measure the spread while you are out there. A tree that wants 20 to 35 feet of width has no business going in against your siding, and you will be the one running the saw in ten years.
Read the full article: Evergreen Trees: 8 Types and How to Choose
