Juniper ‘Grey Owl’

* Common name: Juniper ‘Grey Owl’

* Botanical name: Juniperus virginiana ‘Grey Owl’

* What it is: This common, low-growing needled evergreen has been around garden centers for years… and deservedly so for several reasons.

   First, ‘Grey Owl’ is durable – surviving our summer heat, our summer cold, our hungry deer population, and even fairly poor soil.

   Second, it’s an attractive plant with silvery-gray foliage and a spreading, spray-form habit that makes an excellent weed-choking groundcover.

   And third, it’s a horizontal variety of our native Eastern red cedar, producing blue-gray fruits (actually cones) that birds relish.

* Size: Plants grow fairly fast to about three feet tall and five to six feet wide. This slightly taller habit than ground-huggers like the popular ‘Blue Rug’ make it better at weed-blocking. (I’ve found it to be more blight-resistant than ‘Blue Rug,’ too.)

* Where to use: ‘Grey Owl’ is a good option in any hot, sunny area where you’re trying to cover a lot of ground fast and keep out weeds. A sunny, south- or west-facing slope is perfect.

   Plants also can be used in sunny borders, under or around limbed-up trees that allow plenty of light under their canopies, or even as stand-alone specimens. Just give them plenty of elbow room (six feet minimum) and ample sunlight.

   Avoid using them near apple, crabapple, and hawthorn trees because those trade fungal rust diseases back and forth. Also avoid planting in wet areas, which can rot juniper roots.

* Care: Keep plants damp the first season or so, then ‘Grey Owl’ should never need supplemental water or fertilizer.

   If you’ve given plants plenty of room to spread or planted them in a mass, they won’t need any pruning either. Otherwise, use pruners or loppers to shorten or thin plants as needed at the end of each winter. Don’t shear or you’ll destroy the natural spray-form growing habit.

* Great partner: None needed if you’re massing ‘Grey Owls’ as a groundcover. Otherwise, sun-loving, blue- or purple-blooming perennials make good neighbors, especially catmint, dwarf Russian sage, lavender, and salvia. Junipers in general pair well with ornamental grasses, too.