Full Speed A Hedge® American Pillar Arborvitae

Establishing hedges and screens to outline the boundaries of your property, or create internal areas, is a fundamental need, especially with a new garden. Evergreen screens provide plenty of privacy, year-round, and they also provide protection from winds and create fantastic ‘micro-climate’ growing areas in your garden, where your plants will thrive, and you will be able to grow plants well, right to the limits of their hardiness. This is important everywhere, but especially in colder zones, where the plant choices are more limited if you don’t have a sheltered garden.

Trouble is, most of the choices available have two problems – they either grow too slowly, so it takes years to get that hedge of your dreams, or they grow fast, but out as well as up, soon eating up big areas of your garden with 8 or 10 foot wide plants that need constant trimming to keep them in check. Not any more. With the Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae you get rapid growth – 3 to 4 feet per year – but up, not out, so that a mature tree that has not been trimmed will be 20 feet tall in just a few years, but stay only 3 feet wide – even less with occasional trimming. So now, even in a small garden, you can have tall, sheltering and screening hedges, and still keep your garden free and open, for family fun or an amazing plant collection. With this outstanding new introduction it will be ‘full speed ahead’ for the hedges and garden of your dreams.

Growing the Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae

Size and Appearance

The Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae is a new variety of the native white cedar, Thuja or arborvitae. That reliable hedging plant has been a favorite for decades, especially in colder zones, but the wild version tends to be slow growing, and hedges take years to achieve enough height to work well for screening or as a wind-break. With the Full Speed A Hedge® variety the growth rate has been super-charged, making 3 feet a year easily achievable, ans 4 feet a year possible under ideal conditions. Even more important, all that growth is directed upwards, even if you never trim. So instead of a fat hedge consuming 5 feet or more of your garden, the Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae puts all that effort into ‘up’, making an untrimmed hedge 20 feet tall but just 3 feet wide within just a few years.
The foliage is dense, forming flat fans of rich green closely placed together, at about twice the density of a typical white cedar. This gives you a dense, private screen of beautiful neutral green that is handsome and fresh year-round. So even in the depths of winter your hedge will be glowing green, and in spring and summer its lighter greens are the perfect backdrop to your garden, whether it’s a simple lawn or a complex flower and shrub garden.

Using the Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae in Your Garden

When it comes to planting a slim hedge, this is one evergreen that stands head and shoulders above the competition. Not just literally, but in color, density of foliage, hardiness and ease of growth. For the quickest hedge space plants 2 feet apart, and if you have a wider space plant a double row, with the rows 3 feet apart and the plants 3 feet apart, but staggered in the spaces of the other row. Your final hedge will be no more than 6 feet wide, and it will be a solid, impenetrable screen that cuts traffic noise, gives absolute privacy, and tames the strongest winds. Even in a single row it does all these things, quicker and better than any other arborvitae can do. When planting, set your plants 3 feet back from property boundaries, or other obstructions.

Grow this great new plant as a conventional hedge, but don’t forget its value as a garden accent, grown alone or in clusters of 3, 5 or even 7 plants, out on lawn or in shrub beds. Plant it around your home in the bare angles between walls, and remember that arborvitae doesn’t have the foundation-damaging roots of most deciduous trees, so it can be planted close to walls with confidence.

Hardiness

Because it is a variety of the native eastern white cedar, the Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae is incredibly cold resistant, growing undamaged in zone 3, and right into zone 7. It is suited for the northeast – there are other fast-growing evergreens more suitable for hotter areas in the southeast. It will also grow well in the northwest, where the seasons are mild and rain is plentiful.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

It’s best to plant your Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae in full sun if you want maximum growth and density, but it will also be happy with a few hours of shade each day – unlike other evergreens – and in zone 7 afternoon shade is fine. Avoid planting in areas with limited sun, as growth will be weak and lack density.

It grows well in most soils, including acidic or alkaline soils, and is happy in clay soils too. Don’t plant it in hot, dry, sandy soils as this is a moisture-loving plant that is even happy in wet areas and places that might flood for short periods. If you are looking for hedges for dry areas, take a look at our wide-selection of Junipers, renowned for their drought tolerance.

Maintenance and Pruning

Prepare the planting area with some deep digging and mix in some rich compost or other organic materials If you want to see just how fast the Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae can grow, start feeding it every month with liquid evergreen fertilizer, from spring right to the early part of fall. Avoid feeding late into fall, especially in cold zones, as new growth may brown during the winter. Water regularly too, and this combination of liquid fertilizer and water will give you growth you won’t believe. Remember that during the first season your plants will be establishing roots, so stem growth will not be at its maximum. ‘Full speed’ starts in the second season. Once established, switch to one spring application of slow-release granular fertilizer for on-going good health. Light trimming of the sides will give you the densest hedge, but you only need to do this once or twice a year. Always trim so that the bottom is wider than upper growth, so that you keep a dense hedge right to the ground. Wait in spring for the new growth to darken in color before trimming.

As for pests, don’t worry, this selected native tree is not eaten by deer, and it almost never suffers from any significant pests or diseases, especially if well-watered and growing in good soil.

History and Origin of the Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae

The unusual name of this plant comes from ‘arbor-vitae’, meaning ‘tree of life’. The early French explorer Jacques Cartier gave it this name when he brought it back to France in the 16th century because native Americans had saved the lives of his men by giving them a tea made from this plant. It saved them from scurvy, and has more Vitamin C than orange juice. Botanists call it Thuja occidentalis, and it grows from eastern and central Canada down through the eastern states, usually growing wild along the edges of wet-lands and swampy areas. It can be found in Ohio and Illinois all the way to higher altitudes in North Carolina.

Officially known as ‘American Pillar’, this tree was discovered by John Houser at his nursery in Cherokee country, Georgia, growing among a crop of 500 plants of the variety ‘Hetz Wintergreen’. That original plant, from a tiny cutting, grew to 21 feet tall and 3 feet wide in just 6 seasons. Recognizing its potential, John patented it in 2009 – the year of his 80th birthday. He and his wife Mavis renamed their nursery American Pillar Nursery and specialized in this fabulous new plant. It was soon taken up by Spring Meadow Nursery of Michigan, and released by them in their Proven Winners® collection with the registered trademark of Full Speed A Hedge®.

Buying the Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae at The Tree Center

The Full Speed A Hedge® Arborvitae is a real breakthrough in creating screens and hedges faster than anyone thought possible – not thin, spindly hedges but dense, thick hedges, in just a few years. Hedges that won’t engulf your garden but give you the privacy and weather protection you need for the perfect garden of your dreams. Order your plants now – orders are coming in even faster than this plant grows, so our stock will soon all be gone.