The iPhone, as good as it is, has trouble capturing the subtleties of color on one of my favorite winter trees: the often disregarded (due to its ability to colonize prairie and other disturbed sites) Eastern Deciduous Forest native Juniperus virginiana, Eastern Red Cedar. Highly drought tolerant, these evergreen (well, ever-bronze) do well in a home landscape, particularly where soils are well draining sand or gravel. In the right setting, they can live quite a long time -up to four hundred years. I love them in winter, when the greens turn to lavender-bronze and glow red-orange under lengthy sun sets. These, like many around Shelterwood and elsewhere, have grown in old farm fields, making for a low growing, homogeneous forest. Not ideal, but what is?
I have a soft spot for this species -probably because one, just the one, grew alongside our fence line, in the sandiest of sand soils, providing shade for us kids under hot summer sun. A laundry effluent drywell installed 25 feet away seemed to boost growth, bringing the tree from 25 to 40 feet or so in a matter of a few years. The bigger picture is to survey one’s own attitudes about plants. Often our desire to plant a species is due to our youthful experience with the same or similar species. Sometimes this drive is okay, sometimes it leads to poor decisions.
When we desire a plant, strongly, it's helpful to think about why and whether or not it is a good choice for one’s yard conditions or the ecology it belongs to. Occasionally I see a seedling Juniper trying to get a foothold in the woods, on a trail, under any opening in the canopy that allows enough sunlight. Under those conditions, a spindly one may make it, but won't be able to rise above the canopy of deciduous trees. Others I find, occasionally, around the woods edges that border the human "yard." I pot those up or move them as needed. I get to see these on the roads around Shelterwood and that is good enough.