A brilliant evergreen shrub with intense, golden-yellow foliage that maintains its colour year-round. With a tight, pyramidal-habit that becomes conical with age, this is an excellent landscape shrub. Planted closer together, they do well in hedges, borders and screens. Hardy and cold weather resistant, plants thrive in average, moist, well-drained soils. Low maintenance. No serious insect or disease problems. Attracts birds. Average water needs. Prune in early spring. Arborvitae means “Tree of Life.” When the 16th century French explorer Jacques Cartier was stranded for the winter in what is now Quebec, his crew began to die from scurvy, a disease caused by a vitamin C deficiency. Local Iroquois people gave the remaining crew Arborvitae tea, rich in vitamin C, and they survived.