Blue Arrow Red Cedar

Where you need height in a spot two feet wide, Blue Arrow solves it. Juniperus virginiana 'Blue Arrow' grows 12 to 15 feet tall and holds to 2 to 3 feet across, a narrow blue-green column that gives a planting vertical structure without taking floor space. Full sun, hardy from Zone 4 through Zone 8, and it puts on about 8 to 10 inches a year.

The foliage is tight and upswept, a clean blue-green that holds its color through winter rather than bronzing off the way many junipers do. Branches stay close to the stem, so it keeps its form without shearing and does not splay open under snow the way older columnar junipers can.

It works as a cold-hardy stand-in for Italian cypress, planted in pairs by a door, in a row as a narrow screen, or singly for punctuation in a bed.

Red cedar is a larval host for the juniper hairstreak, a small green butterfly that spends its whole life around these trees, and the fruit on female plants feeds cedar waxwings and other songbirds. It handles drought, salt, and poor dry soil once established, wants sharp drainage, and will not tolerate wet feet. Deer leave it alone. One thing to check before planting: junipers host cedar-apple rust, so keep it away from apples, crabapples, and hawthorns.