All About Eastern Red Cedar

Eastern red cedar is a good screening tree for Austin and Central Texas, and it is not the tree that gives you cedar fever. That is a different juniper. Cedar fever is an ash juniper problem — Juniperus ashei — and eastern red cedar is Juniperus virginiana, a separate species that is not here in anything like the density that causes Austin’s December misery.

The worst thing about eastern red cedar, honestly, is that people have such a negative association with the ash juniper, and the two look so similar. That is a perception problem rather than a tree problem, and it stands between a lot of homeowners and a plant that does the job they are shopping for.

Eastern red cedar at a glance

Is it eastern red cedar or ash juniper?

Two different species, both junipers, both called cedar in Austin, and only one of them is why you cannot breathe in January.

Cedar fever is Juniperus ashei, the ash juniper. It makes up roughly a third of the trees in the Austin area and it peaks in December and January, which is enough volume in one season to make a whole city miserable. Ash junipers are generally on the west side of town in the hill country. Head east and you are generally not going to find the juniper that causes the problems.

Eastern red cedar is Juniperus virginiana, and it is not in the large volume density that creates pollen problems. The one you are thinking about goes in one at a time, along a fence line.

Here is the honest part, and it is worth saying plainly: the two pollens are closely related and cross-reactive rather than identical, and the berries look much the same. Eastern red cedar is not allergen-free. The argument for it is density, season and habitat — not innocence. Planting one in your yard is not the same event as living downwind of a hill country slope covered in ash juniper, and that difference is the whole point.

There is a geographic accident buried in this that is worth knowing before you argue with anybody about it. West Austin is where the ash juniper already grows wild, and West Austin is also where eastern red cedar is hardest to grow — you are not going to get one to really do well out there without engineered soil, irrigation, and some real planning for it. Eastern red cedar is a native tree on the eastern side of the Austin metro area, which is the half of the map where you are generally not going to find the ash juniper at all. The tree people are objecting to and the tree we would recommend mostly belong to different halves of the map.

Where to plant one in Austin

Two site conditions decide whether this tree is a good idea, and they are both about the ground and the light rather than about the tree.

Drainage first. Eastern red cedars need good drainage, and wet feet are a real problem for them. This is the one place the species is genuinely fussy. It is also worth saying that the failure mode is standing water and not watering: you cannot really overwater a tree in Central Texas, and if you appear to have that problem, what you actually have is a drainage problem. Look downhill from the planting spot for something making water pool.

Then the light, which is a time-of-day question. Eastern red cedars want a little protection from the late afternoon sun. They do not have to have it, but they appreciate it. What matters more for a privacy screen is low-angle light — morning or late afternoon sun that reaches the bottom of the plant rather than only the top of it.

That combination is exactly how I sort the screening species on an actual site:

“If they get the afternoon protection that an eastern red cedar wants, and still probably get some low-angle light that makes me think the low branches might survive — that’s a great choice. If it’s getting too much sun, I may lean towards a holly. If they don’t need a lot of vertical height — maybe it’s a hillside where the elevation gives them that — a mountain laurel might be a great choice for long-term durability.”

Note what is not in there: a formula. Ask me straight up which one to plant and I will take everything into account and land on something — but there is no single go-to plan for every circumstance, and that is not evasion, it is the actual state of the question.

There is one distance here that does have a number, and it is the distance to whatever is already standing. Planting a new eastern red cedar near a house, a driveway or a sidewalk, I put it ten feet off — closer in than the fifteen I would want for an average tree. That is worth knowing on a boundary planting, because a conifer that ends up around forty-five feet is not one you would expect to site tight, and this one you can.

The other thing you will want to know is how close together to put them. There is no good number to give you, and the reason is worth understanding rather than working around: closer spacing buys instant gratification and sells you long-term problems, and budget is tangled up in it too. There is not a silver bullet answer. Anybody who hands you a spacing chart is selling certainty they do not have — we go through that trade-off properly on the tree planting page.

Do eastern red cedars lose their lower branches?

Sometimes, and this is the catch a screen buyer actually needs to hear, because it happens at exactly the height privacy is judged at.

As an eastern red cedar reaches its mature size, there is some risk of the lower limbs dying from lack of sun. The canopy thins from the bottom while the top keeps going, and a screen that has quietly retreated to twenty feet up is not doing what you bought it for. If the plant gets good morning or afternoon low-angle light, it can preserve those lower limbs. It really depends on the environment.

Read that as a siting variable rather than a fault in the tree. The right exposure and it holds its skirt; deep shade at the base and it does not. That is a decision made the day the hole gets dug, which is a good argument for having somebody look at the spot before you buy eleven of anything.

It is also the honest reason a screen is not really a purchase. Expecting a few plantings to be perfect for thirty straight years is farce — you should expect to lose one or more of them along the way, whichever species you pick. Which is why a mixed fence line outlasts a single-species one: the wrong pest or the wrong winter cannot take all of it at once. That argument runs across the whole screening set, so the cherry laurel and holly profiles make it too.

It is a recommendation and not a rule, and the owner is entitled to decline it. Some people want the aesthetic of a uniform hedge — they want it to look modern and clean, they have the budget, and that is a legitimate thing to want. The job then is to help them get the best version of that, not to talk them into a mixed planting they never asked for.

Getting one established

Supplemental watering is the single most important factor in whether a newly planted tree survives, and there is no single recommendation that applies to all sites and all trees. Soil moisture has to be monitored. That is not a dodge — a rocky slope on the west side and a deep flat soil on the east side want genuinely different schedules, and the tree in your yard is the one that gets to decide.

What a homeowner can do about that is develop a feel for it. Sticking a screwdriver in the ground once a week teaches you what the ground should feel like. Two things matter more than technique: volume and consistency. Abrupt changes are the worst thing you can do to a tree, so do not water faithfully for years and then quit cold. If you want the longer version, we have written it up in how to water a newly planted tree.

And then watch the drainage, because on this species that is the one that bites.

How you buy one

The real obstacle to buying an eastern red cedar is not availability — we can buy them, and the eastern red cedar you get around here is typically grown in region rather than trucked in from out of state. It is the name. People have such a negative association with the ash juniper, and the two look so similar, that a good plant gets ruled out before anybody has the conversation. If that is where you are, the ash juniper section above is the whole answer.

The practical thing to know is about size. Screening species typically come out of a smaller container than a shade tree does, and the tree planting page walks the whole container ladder and what each size takes to put in the ground. What it means on a fence line is that you are not buying instant privacy in a container. You are buying a plant that gets to its first twenty feet reasonably fast and then eases off.

Heights are also less predictable on privacy species than on shade trees. Specified heights for shade trees are typically more accurate than for privacy and ornamental stock, so if an exact height matters to you, that is worth saying out loud before anybody goes shopping.

One more thing that is invisible from the outside: you do not pick the individual plant. We do not run a nursery lot for customers to walk. A certified arborist meets you, works out the appropriate size and species for the site, and then hand-selects the stock — favouring quality over size, which occasionally means a slightly shorter plant that is a better tree. That selection is the part of a tree planting job you never see.

Our take

Eastern red cedar is genuinely a good tree. It is not invasive and it does not take over. It makes little berries the birds love. It is a very conventional evergreen, Christmas-tree-looking plant, which is either exactly what you want along a fence line or exactly what you do not, and that part is taste.

Where it earns its place is duration. Typically 60 to 80 years, and a hundred happens though it is rare — which puts it in the same band as cedar elm, Mexican sycamore and red oak, and that band is the normal expectation for a good Central Texas tree. Set that against the safer recommendation and you get the real choice. Hollies are the reliability pick: hardy nearly anywhere around here, forgiving of the site, and the right answer if what you want is for the thing to simply work. Eastern red cedar lives longest when the site actually suits it. Getting too much sun with no protection, and I may lean towards a holly. Good drainage, some afternoon relief, low-angle light at the base that makes me think the low branches might survive — that is when the cedar is a great choice.

For a conifer that wants more sun and heat rather than less, Arizona cypress is the other good one and it sits in the same niche, at 60 years. Italian cypress is a more expensive variant on the same idea, and it lives 50 years — so the pricier of the two is also the shorter-lived one, which is worth knowing before you pay the difference.

If you are looking at a fence line and trying to decide, the useful next step is having somebody stand in the spot and read the light and the drainage before anything gets bought. That is the whole decision, and it is not one you can make from a catalogue. Get in touch or call us at (512) 996-9100.

More trees for Central Texas

• Central Texas Tree Field Guide — the rest of the species entries, grouped by what you want the tree to do
• Hollies for privacy screens — the reliability pick, and the one to plant where the sun is unrelenting
• All About Arizona Cypress — the other good screening conifer, for hotter and sunnier sites
• Cherry laurel — the creek-or-irrigation hedge, and a much shorter cycle
• Texas Mountain Laurel — 50 years, and the one to plant when the grade already gives you the height