Amazing IMO! They look like some kind of creature looking over their shoulders while running from something, A fantasy! Cool!

is that hidden lakes...

It is Hidden Lake! I like this grouping, but my spouse used the terms ”creepy” and “novelty” to describe it. When describing plants, I take ”novelty” as a pejorative. It looks to me like they are engaged in a dance ritual.

Very nice. To me they’d be deemed sculptural. As I recall they also had a nice grouping of nootkatensis.

tj

I am a fan. I would love to have one

Might need a rename: Picea omorika 'Kokopelli'...

I think more of an old disney movie 'Flowers and Trees'.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2tam6i

Bill - what a marvelous movie! Quite a lesson in it too. It certainly is a fitting comparison to maackia’s pics of the Serbian Spruces.

They even had a conifer in there around 5:10 & 6:30.

Maackia, count me amazed. I think they’re fabulous!

Me too. I can think of a couple places I could put them. ;-)

hidden lakes is about 10 miles from my house..ken

I give them a thumbs up! The cluster looks great in that location and setting!

Just a really cool cultivar regardless!

I absolutely love these trees! They are so graceful and flowing, I just admire there form.

debra

Ken, it’s a very nice area. We saw a big part of Michigan and enjoyed all of it. BTW, if you find yourself in Ann Arbor, it it’s worth visiting Washtenaw Dairy. And I’m from the dairy state!

I hate to be the only hater here.

I'm going with amazing.

" I hate to be the only hater here."

It's ok we welcome a diversity of opinion.

I bought a couple at Larry Stanley's nursery in 2011 and drove them back to the east coast. Alas that was a hot summer and they died, though I can't remember if it was the hot, dry, early part of the summer or the insane > 30 inches of rain in 40 days we had around the time Hurricane Irene. Which, for example, drowned and killed a large Rhododendron rex I'd bought at RSF. If only it had been grafted onto something east coast tolerant, but, alas, this does not seem to be a practice PNW rhodie nurseries are willing to take up. Other than Kathy Van Veen, before she tragically died, way too early. Contrast with the largest Rhodoendron wholesaler in the world, Hachmann in Germany, that grafts ALL their rhododendron liners!

Although PNW nurseries (and some in the south) are willing to graft Abies onto Abies firma, I wonder if they only do that begrudgingly because we've hit some critical mass of demand where, the cat's out of the bag, and everyone (well, who cares to collect rare conifers) KNOWS that many fir cultivars and species have to be so grafted to survive in the South and mid-Atlantic. Here was the response from a certain PNW nursery manager when I asked about them also producing Chamaecyparis grafts. Since Lawson cypress cultivars fail in the SE when grafted on that species:

The Lawson cypress die for a whole host of reasons, but the primary one is definitely the Phytophthora.

Grafting on another Chamaecyparis species may work, but thinking about how slowly pisifera & obtusa grow compared with Lawson, I anticipate a bulging graft junctions with a reverse taper (bigger on top and puny beneath the union).

He doesn't sound very enthused to try this out. First of all, I had suggested he graft C. l. 'Imbricata Pendula' onto C. obtusa or C. pisifera. Both of which get quite large in their straight species form,

https://www.treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/chamaecyparis/chamaecyparis-pisifera/

https://www.treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/chamaecyparis/chamaecyparis-obtusa/

maybe he's unfamiliar with that and is assuming these species are the little buns used as foundation plants? They not super rare: fresh Japanese seed of C. obtusa is available at Sheffields. I rather doubt there's a risk of most cultivars of Lawson cypress outgrowing Asian rootstocks, since they tend to be smaller and slower growing in the first place!

Back to the matter at hand, although blue spruces will hideously limp along on the east coast and root rot is not normally blamed for their failures, clearly P. abies does much better. I always wondered if those Bruns Weeping Spruces were grafted on to P. abies, or something else, but didn't think to ask Larry at the time and of course he's retired now.