Broadleaved Evergreen Trees for the Pacific Northwest

Too great a brilliance, or too much of it, will create a sense of surfeit in years to come. The toes, like the lawn, are the framework and background to our colourful shrubs and border plants.
Graham Stuart Thomas, Trees in the Landscape

Lithocarpus densiflorus. Photograph by A.L. Jacobson.

The cultivated landscape of the Pacific Northwest draws on many borrowed ideas, most of which have come from the northerly latitudes and colder climates. Even though snow is headline news west of the Cascades and our winter color is green, something about our rugged coniferous backdrop seems to call for the ambience of northern Europe, New England, or even the prairies of the Midwest. The occasional bad freeze lends the weight of logic to the widespread feeling that plants from warmer climates do not belong here.

Lost in all of this is the richness and diversity that comes from a more cosmopolitan plant selection. Most notably missing from many Northwest landscapes are broadleaved evergreen trees. While one of the handsomest of these, the madrone (Arbutus menziesii), is an abundant native, few others are commonly ...