Cypress Surprise

SO MY FRIEND BOB, who’s a landscape architect and arborist, and I are sitting at an outside table at a Greek food fair, knocking back skewers of souvlaki, when I ask him, “What’s your favorite landscape plant?”

“I like that little Hinoki cypress,” he says.

“You mean Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Nana Gracilis’?” I said.

“Yep. That’s the one.”

At first I didn’t respond, not because my mouth was stuffed with tzatziki-slathered chunks of chicken and peppers, but rather because I was dumbfounded.