The Coenosium Rock Garden, a prestigious American Conifer Society reference garden, contains more than 300 unusual conifers. The collection surprises with the variety of colors, cones and foliage.
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Many of these conifers were donated by specialist growers Robert & Dianne Fincham. Bob has been a conifer expert, collector and propagator for more than 40 years.
Our garden is named for his former nursery, Coenosium Gardens. Bob made a gift
of hundreds of rare and dwarf conifers from his nursery to establish the garden that today is the Arboretum's gem.
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Rick Lupp of Mount Tahoma Gardens donated hundreds of alpine plants for the scree garden, where alpines grow as they would in mountainous terrain.
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The Finchams, Steve Hilderbrand, Yuki Kato and Van Bobbitt collaborated on the design, which was six years in construction. The Asian-influenced design includes
a naturalistic stream, meandering paths and even deciduous trees such as beech, maple and gingko.
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Many varieties of pine, spruce, fir, larch, cedar and more make up this community. Some are green all year, some turn in fall or winter. Tall weeping conifers grow alongside dwarfs that look like tiny groundcover, but that may be 20 years old.
‘Blue Ice’ Arizona Cypress, Chief Joseph Lodgepole Pine and Korean Fir
This is a searchable list of the plants in the Coenosium Rock Garden as of May, 2016. Most are conifers, some of them quite rare. Scroll down the list or use the search box in the upper right corner to locate a specific plant.