Spruce up your yard! With cold-weather hardiness, evergreen beauty and a range of sizes and shapes, the many types of spruce trees offer something for every landscape.
Picking the Right Type of Spruce Tree for Your Yard
Spruces are tall, symmetrical conifer trees with evergreen needles attached individually rather than bunched like pine needles. While they resemble fir trees, spruces drop their cones intact rather than dispersing seeds first as fir trees do. Denizens of cold climates, there are almost 40 species of spruce, many important forest trees harvested for pulp and paper products.
Only a handful of species are common, but they include many diverse cultivars with different sizes and features. Read on to learn about the various types of spruce trees and how to care for them:
Spruce Tree Varieties
Spruce trees belong to the genus Picea. Common spruce trees are widely used for landscaping, reforestation and ornamental purposes. According to the University of Illinois Extension, “Several species of spruce are commonly planted in the Midwest for use as windbreaks, screens and specimen plantings. Norway spruce (Picea abies) and Colorado blue spruce (P. pungens var. glauca) are the most frequently planted in the landscape.”
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Blue Spruce Trees
Blue spruce (Picea pungens f. glauca), also called Colorado blue spruce, is a beautiful tree with blue-gray needles. Being colorful and relatively drought tolerant, it’s a favorite of many homeowners unless placed in the wrong spot—it grows quickly to 60 feet tall and can overtake a small yard.
Dwarf cultivars grow slowly to 10 or 15 feet tall and are easily trimmed to the desired shape. Montgomery and Fat Albert are two popular cultivars.
- Zones: Best in USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 3 through 8.
- Culture: Full sun; rich, evenly moist soil.
Note: Blue spruce under stress are prone to a disfiguring fungus, Cytospora Canker.
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Norway Spruce
As the name implies, Norway spruce (Picea abies) is a European native now common in North America. It’s large—up to 80 feet tall and 35 feet wide—and can grow three feet per year in the right conditions. Fast-growing Norway spruce is a beautiful, graceful evergreen with a pyramidal shape and boughs that become more pendulous with age. Many small cultivars are available, including the popular bird’s nest spruce Nidiformis and Pumila.
- Zones: 2-7
- Culture: Full sun; tolerant of wind and various soils.
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Oriental Spruce
Slower growing than the Norway spruce, Oriental spruce (Picea orientalis) can take half a century or more to reach 50 to 60 feet in height. A dense conifer with lustrous, dark-green needles, it grows in an attractive pyramidal shape highlighted with pendulous branches. This graceful habit makes Oriental spruce an excellent specimen plant. Cultivars are even more intriguing: Aurea has golden yellow new growth; Pendula is a compact weeping cultivar.
- Zones: 4-7
- Culture: Full sun; tolerates some shade and poor, stony soil; needs protection from strong winter winds.
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Serbian Spruce
Serbian spruce tree identification is very easy. With its narrow, pyramidal shape and drooping or sometimes ascending branches, Serbian spruce (Picea omorika) looks beautiful as a specimen or grouped together as a hedge. Slowly growing to 50 to 60 feet tall and 20 to 25 feet wide, Serbian spruce features green needles with a silvery underside that shimmers in the breeze. Aurea has yellow needles, Nana is a dwarf and Pendula has drooping, twisted branches.
- Zones: 4-7
- Culture: Part shade; deep, rich, moist soil that is well drained; benefits from protection from harsh winter winds.
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White Spruce
With its adaptability, white spruce (Picea glauca) can serve many functions in the landscape, from specimen to background plant to windbreak to privacy screen. The glaucus green color of the needles looks good paired with darker evergreens, and the mature size (40 to 60 feet tall and 10 to 20 feet wide) won’t overtake most landscapes.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, “White spruce is found on a variety of soil and moisture conditions. The 5-year ratios of growth to volume of both white and black spruce are much lower than the average for all species, and the ratio of mortality to volume is much higher for both species. But the ratio of removals to volume is over five times higher for white spruce compared to black spruce.”
- Zones: 2-6
- Culture: Full sun but tolerates some shade; adaptable to wind and drought.
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Black Hills Spruce
Black Hills spruce (Picea glauca var. densata) is a variety of white spruce with much denser foliage. It has an attractive pyramidal shape and grows slowly to 40 feet tall by 35 feet wide, so it fits into more home landscapes than bigger forest trees. This is a good species for an exposed site because it is more tolerant of wind than other spruces.
- Zones: 2-6
- Culture: Full sun to part sun; accepts higher pH soils.
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Dwarf Alberta Spruce
This is the spruce most urban landscapers turn to. Dwarf Alberta spruce (Picea glauca Conica) is a cultivar of white spruce. Growing just two to four inches per year, dwarf Alberta spruce can take 25 to 30 years to reach 10 or 12 feet in height. With its dense needles, conical shape and pretty green color (blue-green on Blue Wonder), this spruce can be planted in front beds and even containers.
- Zones: 3-6
- Culture: Full sun; moist, well-drained soil.
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Black Spruce
Not to be confused with Black Hills spruce, a variety of white spruce, black spruce (Picea mariana) is a separate species and one that is more tolerant of wet soils than other spruces. A slow-growing, tough tree, it reaches 30 to 50 feet tall and 20 to 30 feet wide. It has an interesting shape, too—pyramidal like other spruces, but with sweeping downward branches and a narrow, spire-like crown.
- Zones: 2-6
- Culture: Full sun; moist, acidic soil.
Tips for Spruce Tree Care
You need to know the evergreen tree care techniques for your spruce trees. You should give attention to several major factors. It will ensure your trees’ health and longevity. Always plant your spruce trees in slightly acidic soils. Also, there should be a well-drained system. If you plant them in full sun, they will grow much more beautifully.
Regular pruning is also mandatory. You have to remove the dead or diseased branches. Maintain a species gap between 2 trees. Also, you need to be aware of common diseases. Do regular Rhizosphaera needle casts. Apply the appropriate disease management strategies. It can improve your trees’ health.
FAQs
What are the most common types of spruce trees?
Only eight spruce trees are very common: blue spruce, Norway spruce, white spruce, black spruce, Serbian spruce, oriental spruce, black hills spruce and dwarf Alberta spruce.
How can you identify different spruce tree species?
You can mainly distinguish your spruce trees by their color. Also, their needles’ texture and growth habits are different. You will see blue-gray needles in blue spruce. They are also pyramid-shaped. On the other hand, Serbian spruce has green needles with silvery undersides.
Which spruce tree grows fastest?
If you say fastest-growing spruce tree, the answer may be the Norway spruce. Many studies say that they can grow up to 3 feet in a year. The total height can be up to 80 feet. But you need to maintain them regularly.
What spruce trees are best for small yards?
If you have a small yard and want to grow spruce trees, you can definitely go for dwarf Alberta spruces. Their growth is slow. Their maximum size can be up to 12 feet.
Sources:
- VCE Publications: “A Guide to Successful Pruning, Pruning Evergreen Trees”
- NMSU: “Rhizosphaera Needle Cast Disease of Blue Spruce”
- University of Illinois Extension: “Plant Clinic Report. Spruce Problems (Pest and Cultural Issues)”
- ScienceDirect: “The effect of salinity on the emergence and seedling growth of Picea mariana, Picea glauca, and Pinus banksiana”
- Oxford Academic: “Nutrient enrichment of white spruce seedlings during nursery culture and initial plantation establishment”
- NLM: “Comparative Seedling Ecology of Eight North American Spruce (Picea) Species in Relation to their Geographic Ranges”
- ResearchGate: “The effect of nursery substrate and fertilization on the growth and ectomycorrhizal status of containerized and outplanted seedlings of Picea abies”
- Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources: “Spruce. White spruce, Picea glauca. Black spruce, Picea mariana”
- USDA: “Blue Spruce”
- The Morton Arboretum: “Spruce diseases”
- USDA: “2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map”
