CONIFERS used to be seen as dull, boring and way too tall – think Leylandii – but so many new varieties are now on the market that you can add colour, architecture and form to your garden when everything else has entered winter dormancy.

Garden centres are now awash with more compact conifers, as National Conifer Week aims to demonstrate the variety and colours available and what you can do with them.

Chairman of the British Conifer Society and owner of Kilworth Conifers Derek Spicer explained: “We have between 3,500-4,000 varieties and we are finding that the dwarf range we do is becoming much more popular.”

New and colourful varieties are starting to appear, he observed. “There are, in particular, a lot of Phillyrea occidentalis cultivars, which offer golden colour and varying degrees of rates of growth. But they don’t suffer much from plant diseases.”

You can add colour to the darkest scene with an array of conifers, he says.

“There are some superb colours around now, mostly golds, but a few things which turn bronze or a reddish colour.”

Create hedging out of conifers to provide natural barriers, privacy and a great backdrop to other planting.

“Thuja occidentalis ‘Degroot’s Spire’ will make a very narrow hedge, will grow to a couple of metres in 10 years and is easy to trim. There’s a really bright gold form of the Western Red Cedar, Thuja plicata ‘Goldy’, which is quite vigorous but very amenable to trimming.

“Try Thuja occidentalis ‘Smaragd’ – which is an upright, very narrow conifer with fine green foliage. It’s ideal for a suburban hedge, as it has a naturally tight growing habit. We have two or three golden forms of that, including ‘Golden Smaragd’, ‘Golden Anne’ and a dwarf called ‘Filips Magic Moment’, which should only need pruning at the top.”

Favourites for small gardens include Picea glauca ‘Jalako Gold’, Taxus baccata ‘Standishii’, Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Nana Gracilis’, Picea pungens ‘Globosa’ and Chamaecyparis lawsoniana ‘Minima Aurea’.

Conifers can also be grown in pots. “Traditionally people have used the old Lawson cypress ‘Ellwoodii’, but I don’t. They’d stand in a container for a long time because people don’t tend to water them enough,” said Derek. “Conifers suffer if they dry out.

“Better choices might be pines, and if you go for a slower growing pine, you’ve got an architectural form rather than a bolt upright type.”

Regular upright conifers for pots would be underplanted with pansies or other spring-flowering plants, which can be replaced with summer bedding to extend the season.

Beautifully-shaped conifers can make stand-alone features on a patio or in the middle of a lawn or be put with other formal evergreens to create sharp architectural features.

Spherical or bun-shaped conifers create punctuation points at the edge of a border or at either side of entrances. They can also provide a great contrasting shape in a border of dainty perennials.

“I would put a number in rather than just one, mainly to give a bit more continuity. Conifers lend themselves to a formal design at the back or dotted around. Alternatively, if you have a formal garden, put an informal array of conifers in, in different shapes and sizes, suggested Derek.”

Cryptomerias (Japanese cedar) should be considered, he said. C. ‘Elegans’ changes colour strongly in the winter (to purple and red), but it is a very vigorous grower. However, you can trim it and and won’t hurt it.”

But there are slightly more compact versions you can buy, including C. ‘Elegans Compacta’ and ‘Elegans Nana’, available from specialists.