Landscaping is a great way for landscape architects and designers to express themselves in an artistic manner and present their art to the world around them. Garden conifers can be considered the bones or skeleton of the garden and can provide high drama for all seasons of the year. Garden conifers offer landscape professionals and gardeners a diverse palette of various forms, colors and textures. These attributes enable the designer to create a garden rather than just a landscape. Knowledge of growth rates helps in the proper selection and citing of the plant.
Problems occur when fast-growing trees are planted too close to buildings and to each other.
By using slower growing plants, one can cut the growth rate in half and double the life of the planting before the plants outgrow the space available. The American Conifer Society has changed emphasis from dwarf conifer to garden conifer because the word dwarf is a relative term with a variety of interpretation. Therefore, ACS has adopted the following four size categories for garden conifers. Many garden conifers display a rainbow of colors in shades of green, yellow, orange, blue, lavender and purple. Good yellow cultivars can add color to a garden.