Colorado Blue Spruce
Picea pungens · a blue spruce
Planted for its stiff, silvery-blue needles and formal, pyramidal shape, a classic specimen or screen, and it grows more drought tolerant with age than other spruces. It needs cool summers and struggles in heat and humidity. Keep young trees watered, and give it sun and room for air to move.
- Mature size
- 45 × 15 ft
- 13.5 × 4.5 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 2a–7a
- USDA
- Sun
- Full sun to part shade
- Water
- Medium to moist
Colorado Blue Spruce at its mature size
A mature Colorado Blue Spruce grows 30 to 60 feet tall and 10 to 20 feet wide, taller than most people.
Drawn to scale beside a 5 ft 9 in person. With VeraScape, you see it at this size in your own yard.
Typical mature size, unpruned. Sources: NC State Extension, Missouri Botanical Garden.
Through the year
What Colorado Blue Spruce looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
In leaf · Year-round
Dense stiff silver-blue needles on tiered branches.
Photos
Growing Colorado Blue Spruce
- Grows well in
- The Northeast, the Midwest, and the Plains and Mountain West.
- Growth rate
- Medium
- Good for
- Privacy screen, specimen, deer resistant, and winter interest
- Leaves
- Evergreen
- Native to
- Rocky Mountains (United States)
Spacing
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Colorado Blue Spruce, that’s about 15 ft apart, center to center.
Place a row in your own yard and VeraScape spaces them at their mature width, so you can see whether they’ll crowd the walk.
See Colorado Blue Spruce in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.
Other spruces
Dwarf Alberta Spruce
Black Hills Spruce
Colorado Blue Spruce
White SpruceAll drawn to the same scale.