How to Grow Juniper (Juniperus)

Views: 23402 | Last Update: 2009-04-30
How to Grow Juniper (Juniperus) - Provided by eHow
The juniper, or juniperus, is a beautiful tree that is found throughout the northern hemisphere. Grow junipers by keeping them out of really hot climates with instructions from a sustainable gardener in this free video on gardening and plant care. View Video Transcript

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Yolanda Vanveen

Video Transcript

Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen, and in this segment we're going to learn all about how to grow juniper or juniperus, it's a beautiful tree that grows almost anywhere. Now junipers are found all over the northern hemisphere natively. They're from Japan, China, through Europe, and even into the Americas, there's native junipers and there's so many different varieties of junipers. But most of them are very hardy from zone 4 to 9, even 10, they don't like really, really hot climates like a lot of pine trees don't, but they can handle zones all the way down to 4, so they're pretty hardy. This particular juniper is a Blue Star juniper, and its juniperus squamata, Blue Star, it's a dwarf evergreen, about 3 feet tall by 5 feet wide when it's mature, and I love the steel blue needles, I just love the color. And they like sun on the coast or sun or part shade inland. So they really like a lot of sun if it's a really cooler climate or a coastal climate, and inland they almost do better with part shade. Junipers like water in the summer but they really want to dry out in between watering, they don't want to sit in water too much, they're more of a dry climate pine than a warm climate pine, and they're used in Bonsai and they're gorgeous, they could live to be hundreds and hundreds of years old. they can grow to be really old, and their branches and stems will warp and look very weathered, and there's some beautiful examples in a lot of national parks in America. But in your garden you just treat them like a pine tree, just put them in a sunny spot or part shade, give them water in the heat of the summer, and once they're established you really don't take care of them in any way. And they make great berries too, so they're really pretty through the fall. And they use some of the berries in some of the varieties to make gin. So they have a lot of medicinal properties as well. They're a great garden addition.