Clip some representative sprigs and take those to some garden centers, look at whatever ground cover type junipers they have in stock. With foliage samples in hand - and your recollection or photo of what the entire shrub looks like - you should be able to tell when you have found the same variety.

You won't, of course be able to buy one that is as big as the remaining one you have already. Don't know what your house looks like but this kind of issue - trying to restore the layout when one of the involved plants is lost - is one of the reasons to never do formal planting, with matching pairs and the like - unless the design of the overlooking architecture is also geometrically symmetric.

some juniper can be rooted ... but it would take years to grow to size ... tree time ...

there is no alberta spruce pic .. per your first sentence .. so i am wondering what i am missing ... lol ...

with very mature.. older plantings.. it might be impossible to find the match ... in the back of your mind.. you should probably be thinking about ripping out whats left ... and starting over ... lots of work.. but change is good ...

if you give us a pic of the whole setting.. we might be able to make suggestions for a redo ... but probably better to do that in the conifer.. shrub.. or perennial forums ... as this forum is more of the name puzzle game ...

one problem with junipers... is that they can have juvenile and adult leaves/needles ... so that makes it harder to ID them

ken

Thanks guys but I’m not concerned about making it look like it did before the damage. I’m just trying to find out the species of this shrub so I can put another in there. I know it will take years to fill in fully. I’m not interested in changing the design or ripping out everything to put in something new. I’m just trying to get help plant ID.

Yes, the pictures uploaded fine. They looked flipped when I uploaded but the final post corrected that I guess.

I also work 12 hours a day and have a young family so taking a cutting to a greenhouse and walking around hoping I find the plant just isn’t possible at this point in my life. That’s why I was hoping for an ID so I can call around on my lunch break and see who had this plant so I can quickly go pick it up.

Is there anything else I should post or add different pictures that may help in identifying this plant?

In my internet searches, i found a juniper called green carpet, but it Looks too low plus the “leaves” are needles. This shrub in the picture has “leaves” that look almost exactly like an arbor vitae. Even the branches look like arbor vitae. I was not able to find any low spreading arbor vitae species though. Any help with ID would be greatly appreciated.

possibly Microbiota (Siberian-cypress)?

Thank You Arbordave! I believe that's it!

Doesn't look like Microbiota structurally in these shots. What you are seeing is this:

one problem with junipers... is that they can have juvenile and adult leaves/needles ... so that makes it harder to ID them

Also would have turned a deep plum color in winter if Microbiota (which I doubt it is as well).

I'm pretty sure it is a juniper, in which case it gets very difficult to identify the exact species and cultivar (especially in a couple of photos) as there are just so many similar looking varieties and age and growing conditions can also affect appearance (as per the above).

Yep. You're less likely to arrive at an exact match without using the method I suggested. And unless you order it to be delivered you are going to be limited to what happens to be available at nearby outlets when you are looking anyway (fall would be a lot better time to plant a replacement than now - although it is true the selection is likely to continue to drop off as winter approaches, so you might want to buy now even if you don't plant immediately).

Consider this: if you don't care about matching the size maybe you don't need to match the variety either.