Baby Blue Eyes Spruce

The blue spruce tree is a classic specimen tree for any garden, but especially popular in colder areas for its hardiness. Just how blue the tree is depends on the exact variety, and if you are looking for a truly sky-blue spruce, that will really stand out in your garden, then you have just found it – the Baby Blue Eyes Spruce. This compact variety won’t turn into a monster tree either. It grows steadily, remaining dense and compact, and never becoming a full-sized tree like the original wild spruce.

Growing Baby Blue Eyes Spruce Trees

The Baby Blue Eyes Spruce is an evergreen tree of a narrow conical form, staying perfectly symmetrical without trimming. Younger trees are relatively broad, and as the tree becomes older it becomes narrower, but it remains much denser and fuller than other common blue spruce trees. After 10 years it will be about 6 feet tall, and it only adds a few inches a year after that, staying neat and compact. For a smaller garden, or a smaller spot in a larger garden, nothing could be better. When young it may grow as much as a foot a year, but as it becomes older it slows down, first to about 6 inches a year, and then less, so that in 20 years it will be about 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide. After many years it may eventually reach 30 feet tall, as a very, very mature tree.

Uses on Your Property

The Baby Blue Eyes Spruce is perfect for so many places around the garden. Plant it as part of your foundation planting, in between windows, or in the angle of two walls. Plant at least 3 feet from the foundations. Use it in smaller gardens as a lawn specimen which will never outgrow the space. Plant a group of 3 or 5 at the end of your lawn, or in a garden bed with other shrubs. Plant it in a bed with other smaller evergreens of different shapes, colors and sizes, for an attractive garden feature that gets better and better every year, and that needs almost no care.

Add some big stones and gravel mulch and you have solved your garden problems. Allow enough room for these plants to mature, so that the bed does not become overcrowded, and so that each plant can be admired. If you have larger planters and boxes, the Baby Blue Eyes Spruce is perfect for them, making a great specimen that will always look good.

Planting and Initial Care

The Baby Blue Eyes Spruce should be grown in full sun, or just a little light shade. It grows best in areas with warm (not hot) summers. Plant it in almost any soil that is well-drained. It thrives even in poor soils, but good drainage is always necessary. If your soil is wet, plant your tree on a raised mound of earth to solve this problem. Make the mound at least 3 feet across and 6 to 12 inches above ground level. Water your tree regularly the first year, but then it will be drought resistant in ordinary conditions. It is also very resistant to urban conditions, unlike some other conifers, so for city gardens its size and toughness make it unbeatable.

This tree is not quite as hardy as many other blue spruce are. It is perfectly reliable in zone 4, but in zone 3 plant it in a sheltered spot. For colder areas choose another variety, like the similar Baby Blue® Spruce. Don’t let the names confuse you. That tree is hardy in zone 2, and it is also a lower-priced option for mass planting, hedges and screening. It will grow taller, and the color is not as intense, but it is still a top-quality selected form.

History and Origins of the Baby Blue Eyes Spruce

The Baby Blue Eyes Spruce is a selected form of the of Colorado spruce (Picea pungens). This tree grows all through the Rocky Mountains and all high places in the west, from Montana to Arizona. Growing at those high altitudes means this tree is super-tough, and cold resistant. This makes it very popular all across the colder parts of the country, especially for the silver-blue color of some plants, often called ‘variety glauca’.

This particular tree was found in 1972 as a seedling growing among other young spruce, at the Verl Holden Nurseries, in Silverton, Oregon. Because of its amazing sky-blue color and compact growth, the nursery patented it in 1985, (PP # 5,457) under the name ‘Baby Blueyes’, but it is today always called ‘Baby Blue Eyes’. The patent expired in 1995.

These special color forms must be grown from stem pieces attached to seedling trees by grafting – not from seed. Cheaper seedling trees will be variable, so choose the best. Our trees are grown in the right way, by grafting, and they have all the exact properties of that original outstanding tree. Specimen blue spruce of this quality are always in high demand, so our stock will soon be gone. Order now and enjoy the best there is.