I mentioned in my post on Sandy’s damage that a gardening friend had recommended Thujopsis dolobrata as an interesting and useful evergreen plant for my northern border. She said it was somewhat rare and I’d tried to find it at some of the bigger nursuries in the area, without success. Although they are slow growing and these will take a long time to mature, I decided to buy some small plants online from Evergreen Nursery. Buying small plants, I could easily afford a spare. They left Chattanooga, TN, on November 6 and were at my door last night when I got home from work.
They were strangely packaged in a box that originally seems to have held frozen salmon, wild-caught near China (thrifty nursery), and also strangely placed in the box horizontally, with their verticle stems folded. I guess that gave them less room to shift? One of them had a major branch broken off in shipment and they have some slight browning on some branches. But for being in a box and bouncing through several states in various trucks, they look pretty good. Here they are soaking on the deck.
I have named them Thuj One and Two. Thuj Two lost the branch and also has a second leader. He might make an excellent candidate for bosai, if only I knew anything about bonsai. I’ll let them dry out somewhat from their welcome home soak and let them get some weak afternoon sun. Then they will spend at least the winter with their pots submerged in the soil in one of my garden beds; maybe the summer, too. I still have a lot of cleanup and preparation to do for their final home and gardening season is pretty much done here.
This white pattern on the underside of their leaves is characteristic of the plant and one of the features that sets this evergreen apart.
