Japanese Umbrella Pine ‘Ossorio’s Gold’

In April of 2022, we finally tracked down a tree we’ve been looking for for a long time, Sciadopitys verticillata ‘Ossorio’s Gold’. Alfonso A. Ossorio was a Filipino American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Manila in 1916. In the 1970s, he began to build one of the world’s largest collections of conifers at his estate and sculpture garden known as “The Creeks,” in East Hampton, NY. The American Horticultural Society called The Creeks “the eighth wonder of the horticultural world.” Helping build the collection at The Creeks was one of Kathleen and Charlie Marder’s first landscaping jobs. One day Charlie stumbled upon a bright yellow Japanese Umbrella Pine in a nursery field that would not turn green, but instead stayed a beautiful golden yellow color all year round. They gifted the tree to Mr. Ossorio and sent cuttings to Oregon to be propagated and become a new cultivar. Ossorio died in 1990 and in 1994 The Creeks was sold to banker Ron Perelman who removed most of the collection.