Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Fernspray Gold'

I already have this on my list, but you've confirmed that decision.

what's B&B, please?

Ball and burlap, when trees are field grown and then dug up and wrapped in burlap. It's a good way to get very large trees and a lot of plants grow faster in the ground then in pots but it's also more stressful on the tree. When you put a potted plant in the ground, they usually don't get transplant shock and grow quickly but when you plant a ball and burlap tree they usually don't grow well until the second or third year.

oh, right! thanks

must be stressful for plants - pot grown ones only get moved once; B+B get moved out of the ground and back in again, and in the meatimet hey're in "seonsory deprivation" while in transit

yeah, that and getting their roots cut when they're balled up

aw, that don't sound healthy - no doubt commercial growers don't have the time to make sure that they get all the roots - "near enough" would be good enough, so long as they get most of them.

Not sure what the UK equivalent of B+B is - I know one can buy pot, bare-root or other, rootball? - that sounds closest to B+B, but even bare-root must have been in the ground originally, unless they were pot-grown before being lifted.

Think I'll insist on pot-grown plants, delivered still in pot, when I start assembling my forest.

Even that's not always a good thing, though. Years ago I bought a variagated Rubber plant in a pot. when it was time to repot it, i teased the roots out from where they'd got compacted. While I was doing that, my fingers touched something that didn't feel right - when I investigated, I found that here was another pot buried in the mass of roots - plastic mesh, about 3 inches; when it came time for them to pot up the plant, they'd just taken it, pot and all, and put it into a bigger pot. The roots were severely congested and choked in the tiny mesh; it took me ages to snip each bit of plastic to pull the tiny pot away in fragments without damaging the roots, at least any more than I could manage to avoid.

Now when I repot bought plants, I routinely finger-brush out the roots as much as I can, to make sure that there's no starter-pot still embedded in the roots.