What is this? - Please help

We a beautiful large hedge front of our house it provides excellent privacy and it is a perfect fence.


We would like to have the same hedge on the two sides of the front garden. Our neighbours tried to do the same but they have ended up with 5+ different species. All of them are similar yet visibly different:

We are keen to avoid the same mistake and would like to identify our existing hedge correctly.

Once I took a piece of the branch to a local nursery. They said it is not easy to identify them by the look. So they rubbed it and smelled it and told me it is Western red cedar (Thuja plicata). I am not 100% sure because as far as I know Western red cedar has seed cones. We never had that (at least not in the last two years since we moved here). What do you think?

I don’t have much gardening experience I rely on your valuable comments. Thank you.

 

They may well be right, it does look like Thuja. It may not have produced any cones if it has been kept trimmed as a hedge. They can grow pretty big pretty fast so if you are planting more, avoid putting them to close to the house and be prepared for the work involved in keeping them under control on a regular basis!