Blue spruce

I'm not a fan of conifers at all, not in the slightest. Though out of the vast array of different types I think a blue spruce in full splendour is hard to beat imo. My missus loves them, so to keep her sweet I bought one and planted it in the garden.

This was about 5 years ago now. I believe it was a dwarf variety of picea pungens. It's lived up to its name anyway because as soon as it reached about 1 metre tall it stopped growing.

The problem is, although the "blue" foliage is quite striking, it is only on one side really. The other side is quite threadbare. It looks lop sided and not very pretty really, and it's been that way for the last 2 or 3 years.

So yesterday I dug it up and binned it, and today I went to my garden centre and bought another one, just to keep my missus sweet, lol.

I believe one of the reasons for my last one turning out the way it did was because the side which was threadbare was in the shade most of the time (at the side of a fence). The attractive side had full light/sun. Could this have been a factor????

This time I'm putting my new one in a pot, so I can move it around, turn it, do whatever I need to do to try and prevent a recurrence. What are your guys thoughts on this?? Do I stand a better chance of it turning into a beauty all over, rather than in patches??

 

Yeah, definitely, conifers always go brown if they are too close to anything on one side.