There are many choice of trees to plant and reasons why you might want to plant them. In this post I want to highlight a few ornamental trees that might be worth planting in your landscape. Ornamental trees really could be any kind of tree but typically have great flowers or special and interesting foliage. They usually have more than one season of interest. Here are just a few possible choices that you might find.
The red dogwood (Cornus florida) has some fantastic flowers. Dogwoods tend to be under story trees so a location with some shade will help them thrive. They can be infected with a nasty disease called dogwood anthracnose but they are still worth a look at.
Here is a white dogwood. It looks just the same as the red dogwood only it has white flowers.
In the next two pictures you can see an older dogwood and its flowers floating among the trees.
One of my favorite ornamental trees is the Yoshino Cherry. If you’ve been following this blog you may remember me talking about this one. Its white flowers really stand out in the spring. This particular tree has been planted for about 4-5 years.
Even after flowering the canopy of the Yoshino cherry is attractive.
You could look for a weeping cherry. The flowers look very similar to the Yoshino’s flowers but it’s the weeping habit that makes it more interesting.
Here is a Kwanzan cherry with it’s pink blooms.
Another of my favorite trees is the Japanese maple (Acer palmatum). Its vibrant red foliage distinguishes it from other maples. There are green varieties of Japanese maples that have very interesting foliage.
Here you can see the leaves of the maple.
In this picture you can see the samaras or maple seeds. For these seeds to be viable they need to be stratified with a period of cold.
Here is a purple leaf plum that I have taken some cuttings from in the past. In the spring they have flowers similar to the other cherries and leaf out with dark purple foliage. They grow very fast but are not very large trees and may be suitable for small yards and gardens.
This tree is not really ornamental but I like it for it’s fall color. Can you tell me what it might be? Here are two hints:
1) It is a very old kind of tree.
2) It has male and female trees (dioecious).
I love your Cornus – they dont seem to flower here in the Uk, probably a species that we dont get here
Gingko?
Your cherries are beautiful! The Yoshino reminds me of a cloud of fragrant flowers.
I really like the weeping cherry!
Patientgardener,
The dogwoods are on my parent’s property but the pink one was my Mother’s Day gift to her last year. The one’s in the pictures are American natives so you may not have them over there.
Tina,
You got it! It was a Gingko tree. I love the fall color.
Skeeter,
It’s pretty neat how they train them to do that. It’s actually two trees grafted together.
They are all so pretty!