Arborvitae Landscaping Opinions for Front of House

We have a question here from a reader – “You were talking about arborvitae. It reminded me, I had planted those at one of my other houses I lived at and I really love them, but how tall do they get? I sent you a picture of the front of my house where I would love to have some.”

There’s all different sizes and there’s more newer varieties coming out all the time. They have a lot of dwarf varieties. They have one now that only gets 6-7 feet tall. However, it’s only 18 inches tall right now, so it’s going to be a long time before it gets to that size. And because it’s a newer variety, the growers don’t have it three or four feet tall yet. It takes time to get there. 

There’s a lot of other varieties that’ll stay in that 10-12 foot range, a real common size 15-20 foot and then we’ve got some bigger stuff that’ll go all the way 25, 30, 35 foot tall.

The six footers are probably the smallest. If you’re going to go smaller than that, then we’re probably going to move you into more of a pyramidal boxwood or something like that. Away from the arborvitae family, because they’re just going to get bigger. 

So for you, it’s best to use an arborvitae, but it’s different from the pyramidal ones we use for screens. You’re going to use more of a globe arborvitae. It stays kind of small and short and rounded. There’s one called Mr. Bowling Ball that’s really popular, and another arborvitae called Tater Tot that we sell a lot of. Tater Tot only gets like 2-3 feet by 2-3 feet.

It’s really small and easy to take care of for the most part. I would say one of the things they don’t like is to be planted in full sun with rock around them. They have a tendency to burn a little bit because the rocks heat up to 140 degrees, reflecting all that heat. So they’re probably better used in a mulch bed than in a rock environment, if you want it looking perfect. 

I would say like we looked at the front of the picture of the front of your house at the nursery, you probably would not want to do all evergreen plants, but that’s people looking at a painting and having a different opinion. I like a little bit of evergreen because you want something there in the winter, but it’s really nice to have the flowers mixed in too. 

Either boxwood would go along the front or those Mr. Bowling Ball or Tater Tot arborvitaes all would make great evergreen choices. Then use something like one of the dwarf hydrangeas in there, something that’s not going to overgrow, because that’s a single story. You don’t want to put an eight footer in there, that’s all the way up into the gutters. You want to use something more in that 3-4 or 4-5 foot size.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).