Picea glauca 'Conica' (Dwarf Alberta Spruce) // Popular, Hardy 🌲 Cone-shaped Dwarf Evergreen!

Well, good afternoon and welcome to Over-de-Vest Nurseries. It's a very pleasant day in early summer, and here on this wagon, as you see, we've gathered together a little selection of some of the plants that we grow here on the nursery, ones that have been especially selected for their suitability for this region, and ones that are available through a network of garden centers that are located right throughout our region, that's the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States. And if you're interested in finding out more about these plants, and you haven't already, can I suggest that you think about clicking and subscribing to this channel, and then as we post new videos, which we're doing all the time, you'll find they'll turn up automatically in your feed. Now here, as you see, there are some absolutely gorgeous roses, all different sorts. Then we have some beautiful flowering shrubs, of which these hydrangeas are very good examples. Then lots of very nice perennials, and climbing plants, and ornamental grasses too. But amongst them, there's also a very popular dwarf or slow-growing conifer, and this is the conical form of Picea glauca, known botanically as Picea glauca variety, Albertiana conica. And as you see, the conica part means that it's got this very distinct conical or pyramidal shape. It's a very slow-growing, compact-growing variety that puts on about three or four inches a year, and when people say how big does it grow, it's always tough to say what exactly the size will be, because of course it depends a lot on the age of the plant. But I would say after about 10 years, it gets to about four foot high, and over the years when I've seen much older specimens, I've seen some that are bigger than that, perhaps eight or ten or twelve foot high. But in the main, most people plant this because of its compact, slow-growing habit, and the fact that it's like a kind of miniature Christmas tree, with this lovely bright green foliage at this time of year, that then as it passes through the season, and gets to the mature stage in the winter time, it takes on more of a greenish-gray or bluish tint to it. Now it's widely planted because of its compact habit, you can grow it as a specimen in a bed or a border to add height and of course nevergreen presence to it. Personally I've used it for years in containers on my patio and deck. This is a very hardy Zone 2 plant, and since my garden is in Zone 6, I'm able to successfully overwinter these year after year outside, never bringing them in, and growing them almost like little miniature Christmas trees. So it's a very useful plant, and very popular and widely planted. But it's also a plant that has an interesting backstory. You see what's interesting is that it was discovered because the train was late. You see in 1904 Alfred Rider, who was the curator of the herbarium at Arnold Arboretum, and John George Jack, who was also a professor at the Arnold Arboretum, went on a plant hunting expedition to the Canadian Rockies. And when they were there, in fact they were near Lake Lagoon in Alberta, Canada, they discovered that the train they were waiting for was late and going to be delayed. So rather than hang around the station, they went up into the mountains, and there in the mountains they discovered a stand of highly unusual dwarf compact forms of this Picea Glauca, one of the predominant spruces that grows right across the whole of the northern part of North America. Well they collected seed, brought them back to the Arnold Arboretum, one seedling was selected, and from that then all the plants that are in commerce today are derived from that seed collection. So you see, this is a very popular, very shapely, slow-growing dwarf conifer that was discovered because the trains didn't run on time in Canada. This is Picea Glauca variety, Albertiana conica.