Eastern Red Cedar

The Eastern Red Cedar is a rugged, scent-infused pioneer tree that brings dense year-round texture and a deep-rooted history to the home landscape. Celebrated for its aromatic, rot-resistant reddish wood, it became the signature material for classic moth-repelling cedar chests, closets, and the early American pencil industry. In fact, the city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, owes its name ("red stick") to the vibrant, bark-stripped red cedar poles used by local Native Americans to mark tribal hunting boundaries. For the homeowner, this native evergreen is virtually bulletproof—thriving in harsh winds, road salt, and severe droughts where other trees falter, all while providing an impenetrable privacy screen and a winter buffet of powdery-blue, berry-like cones for local songbirds.