Name: Cedrus atlantica ‘Glauca Pendula’ aka the weeping blue atlas cedar
Type of Plant: An evergreen, horizontal/weeping tree with bluish needles that’s often trained into an upright or serpentine form.
Why I Love/Hate this plant: This is a great plant to have fun with. If you want to train an evergreen over an arbor or up a trellis…if you want to have a blue-needled plant drape near a pond or in combination with yellow or green foliaged evergreens, this is the plant for you.
A Word to the Wise: This plant is slow growing, so don’t expect it to cover your arbor in two years. It’s also one that naturally sprawls and drapes, so if you want it to grow up before it hangs down, you’ll have to train it accordingly. That said, because it’s not a fast grower, you can place this in smaller areas. Enjoy!
This weeping blue atlas was trained upright in youth, but allowed to take its natural, draping shape later. Many people take advantage of this by planting the tree near a structure or next to a water feature. When planting this in a landscape, know that even if it’s upright when you buy the plant, it will drape down as it grows, so place the tree accordingly.
Although the combination of this blue atlas cedar is pretty with these gold thread Chamaecyparis, they are spaced a bit too closely. The gold threads grow at least five feet in diameter. Just a word to the wise…
This is an example of the weeping blue atlas placed over a structure.
For comparison, the blue foliaged tree on the right is a blue atlas that is not the weeping form – Cedrus atlantica glauca. A good alternative to blue spruce in places where the spruce trees either don’t do well or grow too massive. The blue atlas is a more open evergreen. It is also fairly slow growing.
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