It’s a great time to be Rich and Susan Eyre.

When they started Rich’s Foxwillow Pine Nursery in 1988, gardeners were not that excited about searching out unusual dwarf conifers.

But now the world – or at least the Midwest – is beating a path to Woodstock.

The winter garden has become almost as important as spring and summer – maybe because we have quite a bit of winter around here.

Conifers come to the rescue, providing color, interesting shapes and even varied leaves.

And dwarf conifers fit on today’s smaller lots while requiring less pruning than their larger siblings The Foxwillow crew will build their own garden as well as one for Chevrolet at the Chicagoland Flower & Garden Show, which runs from Saturday through March 18 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont.

This is the first year the show, long located at Navy Pier, will be in the suburbs.

Visitors will see some unusual trees in the nursery’s garden, planted around a pond and waterfall.

A contorted larch called Diana is a deciduous conifer. Cascading or bending trees include weeping versions of white spruce, Scotch pine and Japanese maple.

Henry Lauder’s Walking Stick is a contorted shrub with corkscrew branches often planted for its conversation value. And check out the dwarf ginkos.

The garden show is designed to get our minds off winter and on to our spring plantings, so the gardens will be brightened with thousands of dollars worth of bulbs: tulips, daffodils and crocuses, also joined by blooming azaleas.

Rich’s Foxwillow Pines Nursery will also sell dwarf conifers and hostas from a booth, with the proceeds going to Heifer International, a group that fights world hunger and poverty by giving people agricultural animals.

At the nursery and the nearby farm where the Eyres live, fabulous conifer specimens peek from the snow and winter gloom.

“We have the largest collection of pine trees at this cold-hardiness place in the world,” Rich Eyre said.

The Eyres specialize in dwarf conifers, but they also sell other types of trees such as maples and ginkos.

The popular cascading or drooping forms of conifers are useful for softening the hardscapes like stone walls used frequently in yards, Rich said.

Cones offer another point of winter interest, such as the drooping cones that Susan points out on a hemlock.

“People are tired of arborvitae, yews and junipers,” she said.

If you look closely, even needles or leaves can be unusual.

A Korean fir has curved needles, which were originally caused by radiating the seeds, Rich said, but the change was passed down through generations.

The native Twisted Needle white pine also puts on a show.

Dwarf trees vary a lot, of course.

Some might grow as high as 20 feet, but that’s a fraction of the 80 feet a regular version of that tree could reach.

These slow-growing trees are important in landscaping if you don’t want the tree to take over and don’t want to spend your life pruning.

A few conifers such as larches are actually deciduous, which means they lose their leaves in the winter and thus they are softer than the needles we are used to.

“They don’t have to get through the snow,” Susan said.

Color that isn’t brown or green might be the biggest surprise from conifers.

Some varieties of pines, spruce and Asian firs turn yellow in the winter.

Susan recommends Scot’s pine, mugo pine and Wate’s Golden pine.

You can find cypress that change their green leaves for plum, while others become bronze, as do some junipers.

Conifers are not just for winter. Some put on a show in the spring, summer or fall.

For example, Norway spruce cruenta turns red in spring, and arocona spruce has reddish tips on its spring cones.

Some trees are variegated, and the traditional green or blue-green provide color relief from the winter’s browns and whites.

Rich comes from a long line of gardeners and farmers, but his real interest in dwarf trees started 40 years ago.

He was serving in the Peace Corps in Bolivia and found a book about them in a locker.

Later he met Susan, who was teaching in Albuquerque.

“I was a biology teacher and a gardener. Rich was the first man who didn’t hassle me at a garden center for spending too much,” she said.

Rich and other tree hunters are always searching for offbeat versions of trees such as dwarf ones and those with unusual colors.

They might be growing at a Christmas tree farm or in a forest. Sometimes they are witches’ brooms, which means they are a small tree growing on a parent.

Rich is best known for introducing a concolor fir called Tubby. It’s a slow-growing perfect pyramid, Susan said.

And people like the rich blue-green color, adds her husband.

While he can’t exactly pick a favorite tree, he points out ones he is fond of, including an Austrian pine, unusual because it grows along the ground in their front yard.

Rich’s Foxwillow Pines Nursery Inc. has 2,500 cultivars on 35 acres, and trees are priced at $15 to $15,000. Age, size and rarity determine the price.

Besides landscaping and gardens, the dwarf trees are used by bonsai growers, in containers and in rock gardens.

ddonovan@dailyherald.com via : www.dailyherald.com