Small, medium trees balance the landscape
The rains have started and the weather is cool, so it is a good time to plant trees. Last week we went over a list of large shade trees, but there are several good reasons to plant small and medium trees.
In balanced landscapes, the small and medium trees link the tall shade trees to the shrubs, perennials, ground covers and lawn grass.
Small and medium-size trees also often mark the formal border between property lines or land use differences. They can provide flowers or colored leaves to serve as decorations, important to those who are interested in year-round color.
If you are interested in wildlife, small and medium-size trees are often a key contributor to cover, nesting sites and food production.
Redbud: This is one of the small trees that lead landscape blooms in early spring. It is blooming now in the San Antonio area, both at nurseries and in landscapes. It is a deciduous tree that grows 15 feet tall, to best effect on the edge or in the shade tree area. After its bloom period, it seems to disappear within the larger trees. There are a number of redbud selections, but here in the San Antonio area, the Texas and Oklahoma versions do best tolerating our hot summers.
Mexican plum: Later in the spring, the Mexican plum will produce a white bloom, followed by edible berries with large seeds. It grows about 10 feet tall to produce a compact well-shaped crown. When birds aren’t busy eating the cherries, the plant is a favorite nesting site. Deer do not eat Mexican plum foliage. It is an attractive addition to the landscape as part of thicket in the shade or sun, or as a more formal arrangement of a planting
of three in a triangle.
Crape myrtles: For full sun, one of the best choices for small or medium-size trees are crape myrtles. Crape myrtles are deciduous with sizes from ground covers to 30 feet tall available. In addition to being popular because you can pick the exact size you need in your landscape, you also can choose the color of the flowers — red, purple, pink or white — that bloom over a long season.
Japanese plum: If you are looking for an evergreen tree that grows to 25 feet in shade or sun, consider Japanese plum. It is versatile in that it does a good job in a formal row along a road or can give your pool area a tropical look. Japanese plum is an exotic plant, so it often wants to bloom too late in the winter to survive our late freezes, but if the fruit does survive, it is tasty to both humans and wildlife.
Lady Banks Rose: Are you familiar with Lady Banks Rose? I use it as a link between
the shade trees in my landscape and the small, lower-growing plants in the landscape. It probably merits a debate on whether it can be considered a small tree. There are two colors of blooms, yellow and white.
Some have thorns like roses, but others don’t.
My white-flowered Lady Banks grows in the shade under two very large trees, a live oak and a mesquite tree. It might be more accurate to say it originates under the two shade trees and then grows as a thick stalked vine or thin trunked tree, depending on your perspective, among the two trees to reach the sun about 30 feet up into the shade trees.
About 40 feet away, the yellow-flowered Lady Banks Rose grows to 10 feet tall and 10 feet in diameter in a classic weeping shape. Both plants bloom in January and are favorite cover sites for birds. Consider the Lady Banks Rose for the role of a small or medium-size tree in the landscape.