Is an eastern red cedar a good tree to plant in Indiana?
Eastern Red Cedar can work here, with caveats. Native and abundant across central Indiana — the default volunteer in old pasture and along interstate fencerows. It is genuinely salt-tolerant, so it survives roadside and driveway-edge positions that brown out white pine and spruce every winter, and it turns up on native-replacement lists now that Callery pear has fallen out of favour here — though it is not, despite the common assumption, banned from sale in Indiana.
What you'd be signing up to clean up
Constant low-volume litter rather than a seasonal dump — fine scale foliage year-round plus shredded bark peeling off in strips. Female trees add a heavy drop of blue berry-like cones that stain concrete and get tracked indoors, which is the complaint that most often triggers the call.
Where to keep it away from
On deep ground it sets a taproot with wide laterals, which is why it holds through drought and rarely uproots; on shallow or compacted clay the system is flatter and more fibrous. It poses effectively no threat to sewer laterals or foundations, making it one of the safer conifers to leave near a drive — the practical root issue is that field-grown cedars transplant badly and the stump grinds hard and resinous.
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