Blue Diamond Blue Spruce

The blue spruce is a garden classic. Particularly in the colder zones this tough, reliable evergreen tree puts on a great show all year round. It can be used successfully as a lawn specimen, in rows or groups for screening, behind shrub borders, on slopes, and even in large planters. It makes a great outdoor Christmas tree as well. But blue spruce trees are not all born equal. There is an enormous range of foliage colors, heights and forms, and if you are looking for a blue spruce, it is always worth taking only the best. Diamonds are without any doubt a girl’s best friend, and for the bluest blue and densest structure, a gardener’s best friend is the Blue Diamond Spruce. It may be small, but like the perfect diamond, it is flawless.

The Blue Diamond Spruce is a specially selected tree that develops into a dense, upright pyramid of branches, growing to around 4 feet tall within ten years. It grows about 4 inches a year, so it is perfect for a smaller garden or a limited space where you want an eye-catching specimen. Like all coniferous evergreens, it continues to grow throughout its life, and in time it will probably reach around 12 feet in height, with a spread of 4 to 5 feet. Because the growth is dense and compact, no trimming is needed to maintain that perfect pyramid – a great benefit of this plant over other slow-growing spruce trees that need regular attention to maintain their best form.

The best blue spruce would also have richly colored foliage, and here too the Blue Diamond Spruce stands supreme. No other variety has such sparkling silver-blue foliage. The blue of the needles is intense and brilliant, and the heavy silver overlay gives it an icy tone that is dramatically different from the common kinds of ‘blue’ spruce so often sold. Those plants are often nothing more than a random collection of seedlings, and they are often hardly any bluer than a wild tree would be. This tree is very different, and it must be seen to be believed. The needles are densely arranged all around the branches, and their stiff form creates the classic look perfectly.

Grow the Blue Diamond Spruce as a dwarf specimen on a small lawn, or in the planting around your home. Its rich color contrasts beautifully with dark-green evergreen bushes. Grow it in a rock garden, or among boulders. Create an attractive garden feature by growing it with other dwarf evergreens in a bed decorated with a few large boulders and mulched with gravel – a super low maintenance and always interesting feature. Grow it in a planter – with its slower growth rate it will thrive for years as a specimen in a box or large tub. No matter how or where you grow it, for 365 days a year its beautiful foliage will be appreciated.

The Blue Diamond Spruce should be planted in full sun, in any well-drained soil. It is as happy in sandy soil as it is in heavier clays, and rocky ground makes it feel right at home. Avoid wet, low-lying areas, and if in doubt, plant it on a low raised mound of soil 6 to 12 inches high. This tough tree thrives in cold zones, and shrugs off temperatures of minus 40 in the winter. Yet it will also thrive in hot areas, growing everywhere except in Florida, California, southern Texas and around the Gulf. Pests and diseases are rarely ever problems, and deer leave it alone. No trimming is necessary, but if you insist, it can be trimmed for extra-dense structure, cutting back to the base of a branch, or snipping off the top inch or two or new shoots to make them branch even more than they naturally do.

The Blue Diamond Spruce is a selected form of the Colorado spruce, Picea pungens. That tree grows all through the Rocky Mountains, from Montana to Arizona, and it is always found high up in the hills, adapted to harsh winds and low temperatures. Wild trees have very variable needle color, and forms with distinctly blue needles are called ‘Glauca’. It was from such a tree that in 1990 Nelis Kools, a horticulturist with the Gebroeders Van Vliet Tree Nurseries in Boskoop, the Netherlands, collected seed. He grew a large batch of seedlings, and among them was one plant that stood out. Not only was it compact, but its needle color was outstanding. He put it through extensive trials to establish its quality, and he called it ‘Blue Diamond’. In 2008 he was granted a patent in the USA on his tree. This tree is grown directly by rooting stem pieces, not from grafting, and this gives it a vigorous and reliable root system. The genetic properties are transmitted 100%, and everything about this tree is identical to that original plant.

The Blue Diamond Spruce is an outstanding variety, and one of the very best dwarf blue spruce trees available.