Night Light Hinoki Cypress

Evergreens that have yellow foliage are always valuable in the garden, for the light and brightness they bring. There are many different tones, from hard, bright golds through butter yellows to the softest chartreuse greens, and each one brings something different to your plant arrangement. The Night Light® Hinoki Cypress covers all those tones, with the tips, especially in spring, being bright gold, but graduating to chartreuse green towards the interior. This creates a great depth of color, more attractive than solidly-colored varieties. Then in winter the gold turns to glowing red-bronze, putting a new face on, that sees it through till spring. All this on a beautiful bushy specimen with graceful, soft foliage you will love to see and touch – no spiny needles will be found. Hinoki Cypress is without doubt one of the most elegant and refined of all evergreens, and when you add the sparkle of gold, you have a beautiful bush with the Midas Touch.

Growing the Night Light® Hinoki Cypress

Size and Appearance

The Night Light Hinoki Cypress is an evergreen shrub, developing into a small tree, if untrimmed. Within 10 years it will be 4 to 5 feet tall and wide, with a dense, rounded structure and branches right to the ground. If left untrimmed it will in time become a tree passing 30 feet in height, with a spread of around 15 feet. The foliage is carried in arching sprays with descending tips that give it a great soft look. The leaves are tiny scales attached to the branches, forming fans of foliage, carried densely along the branches. These open fans create a lovely and distinctive look, and untrimmed it is full, yet graceful, with an eye-catching form. New growth is colored bright butter yellow, and the leaves don’t scorch, even in full sun, as so many other golden evergreens sadly do. Deeper inside the stems the leaf color fades through lemon tones to chartreuse green, making the golden tips really stand out. The color is held all through the year, and in colder zones, in winter, it may take on sparkling red-bronze tones, before returning to gold with the arrival of spring.

Using the Night Light® Hinoki Cypress in Your Garden

This shrub is a wonderful accent plant to use around your home, among green-leafed plants. It looks great in a mixed shrub bed, or with other evergreens of different colors in a collection, perhaps among rocks and gravel. It can also be grown as a hedge – one that will really stand out. Untrimmed it could be planted for screening, or left to mature into a striking large shrub or dense cedar-like tree. In warmer zones it is also an excellent container plant, growing well alone or mixed with other shrubs or flowers, in tubs or planter boxes. Trimmed once a year or more it can be kept at any height, more-or-less indefinitely.

Hardiness

You can grow the Night Light Hinoki Cypress without winter damage in zone 5 and all the way through zone 8 without leaf scorch in summer.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

For the best color development plant the Night Light Hinoki Cypress in full sun – it won’t scorch. It will grow in partial shade too, but the foliage will be more chartreuse – still an attractive and fashionable garden color. It should be planted in any well-drained garden soil, preferring richer and moister soils, but tolerating some summer dryness once it is well established.

Maintenance and Pruning

Mulch the root zone in spring, especially in drier soils, to conserve moisture and keep the ground cool. Pests or diseases are almost never problems with this easy plant. It can be trimmed in late winter, before new growth, or in late spring, after the new growth develops. We tend to over-trimmed our evergreens, so consider giving it more room and letting it develop naturally into a large shrub – its natural grace and charm will surprise you.

History and Origin of the Night Light® Hinoki Cypress

The Hinoki cypress, Chamaecyparis obtusa, is native to Japan, where it is an important lumber tree for high-quality construction. Forests of trees up to 100 feet tall cover the mountains. The name ‘Hinoki’ means fire, after the reddish-bronze foliage color that sets the hillsides ablaze in winter.

In the early years of this century Robert J. Schlecht was working in his garden in Center Moriches, Long Island. He came across an interesting seedling of Hinoki Cypress growing in a bed. He had several different varieties of the plant growing in his beds. The little plant caught his attention because of its bright yellow foliage. He grew it into a larger plant, and in 2008 the Conard-Pyle Nursery in West Grove Pennsylvania grew and tested it in their fields. In 2014 they received a joint patent for the plant, giving it the name ‘Conschlecht’. Conard-Pyle added it to their Star® Roses and Plants brand of new and exciting garden discoveries, with the trademarked name of Night Light®.

Buying the Night Light® Hinoki Cypress at the Tree Center

Turn on the party lights with the Night Light Hinoki Cypress, a great new golden evergreen that everyone is admiring. It will brighten your garden and your heart, but order it now, because our stock is limited, and great varieties like this one sell out fast.