Norway Spruce

Dense year-round screening and thermal cover - the best evergreen bedding tree for the North Orders placed now are for Spring 2027 shipment We take orders in advance and ship at the proper time for spring planting in your region — mid-December in the Deep South through the end of May up north. Pick your state under "When Will My Order Ship?" below and you’ll see your exact ship dates. Get your order in now, we sell out early every season! Norway Spruce If you've ever hunted a farm up north where the deer bed in a spruce or cedar thicket during a January cold snap, you already know why we added Norway spruce. Deer need thermal cover in the winter just as much as they need food, and on a lot of properties there isn't any. Hardwoods drop their leaves, the CRP lays over under the snow, and the deer leave for the neighbor's pines. A block of Norway spruce fixes that. The dense branches hold snow off the ground, block the wind, and hold heat, and deer will bed under them all winter long. Turkeys roost in them too. Norway spruce is also one of the best screening trees you can plant. A single row planted along a road or property line will block the view of your food plot in a few years so the deer feel safe feeding during daylight and the neighbors can't see what's walking out. We like to plant them around the edges of a plot on the side facing the road, and along the access trail to a stand so you can slip in without being seen. It's the fastest growing of the spruces at 1-3ft a year once established, and unlike a lot of screening options it keeps growing for decades and doesn't need to be replanted. Do not put these in tree tubes. Tubes push a tree to grow one straight stem and shed its lower branches, which is fine for an oak but ruins a screening tree. On evergreens they also hold too much heat and humidity and the tree comes out weak and spindly. You want spruce branching from the ground up, so plant them in the open and keep the grass and weeds off them for the first two or three years with a mulch ring or weed mat. That does more for survival than anything else. Deer will nip young spruce a little but rarely do real damage, and once they're above head height they leave them alone. Norway spruce does best in well drained soil and full sun and prefers the cooler part of the country. It's a great fit from Tennessee and Kentucky north. If you're in zone 8 or south (south Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, the Carolina coast, and most of Texas), plant Eastern Red Cedar instead, it does the same job and handles the heat. Norway Spruce are covered by our 1-Year Survival Guarantee without a Survival Kit — evergreens shouldn’t go in a tube, so no kit is required. Follow our planting instructions and it’s covered. Full details here. Variety: Picea abies Height at maturity: 40-60ft (can reach 100ft+ on good sites) Growth rate: 1-3ft per year once established Growing zones: 2-7 (roughly Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma north. Marginal in north Alabama and north Georgia, not recommended for the Gulf Coast states or Texas) Soil type: Well drained, adaptable, does not like wet feet pH: 5.0-7.5 Sun: Full sun Size when shipped: Bareroot approx. 2-3ft Spacing: 8-12ft in a single row for screening, 6-8ft in a staggered double row for a solid block or bedding thicket