Growing Green Giant arborvitae comes down to three things: plant it in spring or early fall when soil is workable and cool, give each tree 6 to 8 feet of elbow room, and keep the root zone evenly moist for the first two full growing seasons. Get those three right and you have a fast, dense, nearly problem-free privacy screen that can climb 3 feet a year once established. Get them wrong and you get a thin, lopsided hedge with brown patches that never quite fills in.<\/p>\n
Most people who strike out with this plant make the same mistake, and it is not overwatering or underwatering, it is spacing them too tight because the trees look small and lonely coming out of the nursery pot. There is also a sign of trouble almost everyone misreads as disease when it is actually just the tree doing something normal. And if you are wondering how long before this thing actually blocks the neighbor’s view, the honest answer surprises people in both directions depending on what you plant and how you treat the first year.<\/p>\n
All of that gets sorted out below, section by section, and the exact numbers you’ll want to save, spacing, depth, watering schedule, growth rate, are pulled together in the Green Giant Arborvitae at a Glance card at the very bottom of this guide.<\/p>\n
Spring and early fall<\/strong> are your two windows, and both beat summer planting by a wide margin. In spring, wait until the soil has thawed and dries out enough to crumble in your hand rather than clump, which usually means a few weeks after your last frost. In fall, aim to get the tree in the ground at least 6 weeks before your ground typically freezes solid, so roots have time to establish before winter dormancy.<\/p>\n Green Giant grows well in USDA zones 5 through 9. Gardeners in zone 5 should lean toward spring planting so the tree has a full season to root in before its first hard winter.<\/p>\n Summer planting is not impossible, but the heat stress on a newly disturbed root ball means you will be watering constantly just to keep the tree alive, let alone growing.<\/p>\n Timing gets the roots started right, but the spot you pick decides whether they ever take off.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Green Giant wants full sun to partial shade<\/strong>at least 4 to 6 hours of direct light a day. Less than that and the tree stays open and thin on the shaded side instead of filling in dense.<\/p>\n Soil matters less than drainage. This tree tolerates clay, loam, even slightly alkaline soil, but it will not tolerate standing water around its roots. If a hole you dig fills with water and stays full for more than a few hours after a rain, pick a different spot or plan to build a raised mound for planting.<\/p>\n Check soil pH only if growth looks stunted later. Otherwise skip the test and put your energy into the hole itself.<\/p>\n Work compost into the native soil rather than replacing it entirely. A tree planted in a rich amended pocket surrounded by dense clay will grow roots that circle the hole instead of pushing out, which stunts it for years.<\/p>\n A good spot with mediocre soil beats perfect soil in the wrong spot every time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Make the hole 2 to 3 times the width of the root ball but only as deep as the root ball itself. The spot where the trunk flares out into roots, the root collar, should sit right at or very slightly above the surrounding soil line.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If the tree is container grown, check for circling roots at the bottom and sides. Slice through a few of them with a clean blade or gently tease them outward. Skipping this step is how you end up with a tree that never anchors well and leans in wind years later.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is the mistake that ruins most privacy screens before they start. Green Giant can reach 15 to 20 feet wide at maturity, and trees planted 3 or 4 feet apart look great for two years, then choke each other into thin, misshapen columns competing for light and root space. Give them room now for the hedge you want in year six, not the one you want next spring.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Backfill with the native soil you dug out, tamping gently to remove air pockets but not compacting it hard. Water deeply right away, enough to settle the soil around the roots.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Spread 2 to 3 inches of mulch out to the edge of the root zone, leaving a few inches bare right around the trunk. Mulch piled against the bark holds moisture against the trunk and invites rot and pests.<\/p>\n The planting is done, but the tree’s survival is decided in what you do over the next several months.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For the first two growing seasons, water deeply once or twice a week rather than a little every day, enough to soak the root zone 6 to 8 inches down. Check by pushing a finger or a screwdriver into the soil; if it slides in easily and feels cool and moist, hold off another day or two.<\/p>\n Established trees<\/strong>generally past year two, handle moderate drought fine and only need supplemental water during extended dry spells.<\/p>\n Skip heavy fertilizing at planting time. A light feeding with a balanced, slow-release fertilizer formulated for evergreens in early spring of the second year is plenty. Too much nitrogen too early pushes soft, weak growth that winter damages easily.<\/p>\n Now here is the sign almost everyone misreads: in fall, interior needles on healthy Green Giants often turn brown or coppery and drop. That is normal seasonal needle shedding, not disease, and it happens to the oldest inner growth every year.<\/p>\n What separates normal shedding from a real problem is exactly what the next section covers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Real trouble shows up as browning at the branch tips, especially on the outer, newer growth, or as whole branches going uniformly brown rather than the scattered inner-needle drop of normal shedding.<\/p>\n Bagworms<\/strong> are the most common pest issue, showing up as small spindle-shaped bags hanging off the branches. Hand-pick them off when you spot just a few. For a heavier infestation, an appropriately labeled insecticide applied while larvae are young works best; follow the product label exactly.<\/p>\n Root rot from poor drainage is the other big one, and it shows up as yellowing that starts at the base of the tree and moves up, often with soft or dark roots if you check at the soil line. There is no cure once it is advanced, which is exactly why the drainage check at planting time matters so much.<\/p>\n Winter burn, an orange-brown scorching on the side facing prevailing winter wind, is common in exposed sites and mostly cosmetic. The tree usually recovers with new spring growth.<\/p>\n Deer will browse young trees hard in areas with heavy pressure, so a repellent spray or fencing for the first couple of winters is worth the effort.<\/p>\n Handle the site and drainage right at planting, and most of these problems never get the chance to start.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There is no harvest here, this is a landscape screen, but the honest timeline for a mature privacy hedge is what most people actually want to know. In good conditions, expect 3 to 4 feet of growth per year once the tree is established, typically starting in its second or third year in the ground.<\/p>\n A tree planted at 4 to 6 feet tall can reach 15 feet within 6 to 8 years under good soil, sun, and watering. Trees crowded, underwatered, or planted in too much shade grow noticeably slower, sometimes half that rate.<\/p>\n Full mature height runs 40 to 60 feet if never pruned, though most homeowners maintain hedges at 10 to 20 feet with an annual trim in late spring or early summer after the first flush of new growth hardens off slightly.<\/p>\n Light shaping is fine any time in the growing season, but avoid heavy cuts into bare wood, since Green Giant does not reliably resprout from old wood without any green needles left on it.<\/p>\n Everything above adds up to a handful of numbers worth keeping close, so here they are in one place.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Get the spacing and drainage right at planting and this tree does almost everything else itself. Everything past that first season is just watching a fast, tough evergreen do what it was bred to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Growing Green Giant arborvitae comes down to three things: plant it in spring or early fall when soil is workable and cool, give each tree 6 to 8 feet of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"lfe_reviewer":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[1693,1692,114],"class_list":["post-2891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trees-shrubs","tag-green-giant-arborvitae","tag-how-to-grow-green-giant-arborvitae","tag-trees-shrubs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2892,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891\/revisions\/2892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Choosing the Spot and Prepping the Soil<\/h2>\n
Planting Green Giant Arborvitae Step by Step<\/h2>\n
1. Dig the hole wide, not deep<\/h3>\n
2. Loosen the roots<\/h3>\n
3. Set spacing at 6 to 8 feet<\/h3>\n
4. Backfill and water in<\/h3>\n
5. Mulch, but keep it off the trunk<\/h3>\n
Watering and Feeding Through the Season<\/h2>\n
Problems That Actually Threaten Green Giant Arborvitae<\/h2>\n
When Green Giant Arborvitae Matures and Fills In<\/h2>\n
Green Giant Arborvitae at a Glance<\/h2>\n
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