Last November, we had a bunch of trees taken out of our yard. “Next spring, we’ll have more trees put in,” we told the tree guy. “We’ll have all winter to figure out what KIND of tree,” we told ourselves. And here we are, it is March, we have not given much thought to trees. (I say “much” because I HAVE thought, “We really should figure out the tree thing.”)
When I have a decision to make, I like to ask about it here. But in this case, you don’t know what part of the country I live in, and that is going to severely limit the advice anyone can give. Many trees do GREAT in one area, and would NEVER MAKE IT in another.
Still, the subject of trees INTERESTS me. I remember my friend Surely advising me to investigate the MESS each particular kind of tree created, which is something I would NOT have thought to investigate. But when our former nut trees were dropping sticky pods on our house, bang! bang! bang! like a burglar hammering through the roof, I thought of it. Every fall when hornets rule the squishy rotted-fruit area under the apple trees, I think of it.
So I wonder if talking about trees, while not the kind of subject I can picture someone making a click-bait Facebook post out of (Someone Planted a Tree and I Could Not Believe What Happened Next!!), might be surprisingly interesting. I mean, I know it will be of interest to ME, but I wonder if OTHERS might ALSO find it interesting.
What I’m looking for is Tree Reports. That is, do you have a tree that’s been a particularly pleasing tree? A nice reliable tree with pretty autumn leaves, for example? Or do you have a tree that’s been a total pain? Maybe it drops unreasonable numbers of branches every time the wind blows, or maybe it has messy seeds that gum up the lawn mower, or maybe it attracts undesirable insects, or maybe it’s susceptible to disease, or maybe it smells weird, or maybe it’s particularly intent on getting involved with underground pipes.
I think my ideal tree would have these characteristics:
1. Not fussy. I’m not going to do much, if anything, to care for the tree after the first few settling-in years. I would just like it to grow in the ground.
2. Not fancy-expensive. I will pay for a good tree, and I will pay more for a really good tree, but I don’t want to pay for fancy-for-the-sake-of-fancy. Like, our tree guy was mentioning this really cool special tree that’s hard to get, and I was already tuned out. The tree does not need to be hip.
3. Relatively quick-growing, for shade. Trees are An Investment in the Future, yes, I appreciate that about them—but I would also like to be one of the beneficiaries of the investment. Our 1960 raised ranch is likely to be bulldozed into a parking lot once Paul and I have moved out (we are right on the edge of a commercially-zoned area), so this would not be a good place for a tree that will be wonderful in 100 years. A faster-growing tree would also allow us to buy it at a smaller/younger stage, which represents a significant decrease in cost, not only for the tree but also for the planting of it.
4. Pretty autumn leaves. I feel silly making this a priority, but the recently-removed trees had dry brown autumn leaves. Not even glossy brown: just powdery and dead. We have a maple tree that goes red, and I love that. I look forward to it in the autumn like I look forward to my tulips in the spring.
Maples are a strong contender. Not fussy. Not fancy. Pretty autumn leaves. I don’t think they grow particularly fast, though, or at least our maple (purchased as a young tree by my parents, as a birth gift for Henry) has not made a ton of progress in 7 years. Perhaps this is an area where we might consider spending more for a larger tree.
Oaks? Are the acorns charming, or a pain? Do they go through the lawn mower and shoot out as if from a slingshot?
I don’t think we want pines. My parents had a whole bunch of pines removed because the needles killed the grass. But we’re not exactly lawn-proud, so maybe pines would make it seem like THAT was the reason our lawn was kind of patchy. And anything evergreen would help block the view of the neighbors. Hm. I’m talking myself into a pine or two.
A flowering tree is tempting. They’re so pretty. Some of them look as if they require pruning. Maybe I would do a little pruning? It’s hard to know.
We like the idea of fruit trees, but have shown ourselves to be People Who Do Not Take Care of Fruit Trees. I’m considering a pear tree anyway. There was one here when we moved in, and the first few years it had such delicious pears. Then the apple trees overshadowed it, and now it is a slim and pear-less shadow of its former self. The tree guy trimmed back the apples, but thinks it may be too late to save the pear. Maybe I have learned my lesson and would NOW take care of a fruit tree.
Maybe two evergreens, two maples, an oak, and a pear? And a pretty little flowering tree?
We have crepe myrtles which are utterly beautiful when they flower which is always late enough in the season to make me fear they didn’t survive the winter.
Do not get a mock cherry. Beautiful flowers, horrible non-fruit that splatters.
Bradford pear trees are beautiful, fast growing, and short-lived (because they are so fast growing). Don’t plant it too close to the house. It’s perfect for a likelihood of future bull-dozing.
I like a crab apple because the apples don’t fall off too much and birds eat them over the winter and they are beautiful in the spring. We had a dwarf crab apple that was lovely for many many years. We also have a bass wood tree that has a very nice shape and no litter. Japanese beetles love it though, so if you get those, maybe not for you. I loved our Bradford pear tree, but now I hear they are bad. Plus they have weak wood and tend to fall apart once they get to a nice size. Tiny pears that the bird eat, no litter.
I agree that maples are my favorite too. There are so many kinds, I’m sure some grow faster than other.
I, like you, love maple trees. They are low maintenance and have pretty leaves. However, my experience with them is that they do grow slowly. I live in Kentucky and we have a lot of Bradford pear trees and dogwoods. The Bradford pear tress always seem quite pretty but without the actual fruit issue. Dogwoods are just beautiful, especially in early spring when you are ready for some color. However, I don’t think they get that big. Can’t wait to see what others post!
I loved our ginkgo tree. Don’t get a female, they have fruit and it’s messy/stinky/bad, but the male trees are just lovely. They have interesting-shaped leaves that go golden in fall.
http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=z990
But male ginkos can change into females! I think they’re beautiful, but if you don’t want to risk stinky fruit, don’t go that route.
Huh. I had no idea trees could be male or female.
Weird! Our house came with three ginkos and I love them. Just a beautiful tree.
A consideration about flowering trees: they attract bees. My neighbours have a beautiful tree that straddles our yard and flowers pink for a couple of weeks. During those weeks the tree actually HUMS because there are so many bees who hang out there for the flowers. You can hear it across the street. This is no problem if your admiring your tree from afar but might be a consideration if someone in your family is afraid if bees or allergic to them.
We have been very happy with the crape myrtle that we planted a few years ago. Beautiful flowers in mid to late summer and pretty fall foliage. They also grow quickly and come in a variety of sizes. They don’t do well in super-cold climates, but they do well in our mid-Atlantic region. Here’s some info about growing zones: http://www.usna.usda.gov/Gardens/faqs/crapemyrtlefaq2.html
Another tree that I love is the eastern redbud. Beautiful light purple flowers in early spring, cool heart-shaped leaves.
+1 to the redbud. So beautiful.
+1 to the redbud also.
When we drive around town, my kids yell “there another one of mommy’s purple trees!” It makes me happy they will always think of me when they see the purple trees in the spring.
There’s also a very similar-looking tree that has yellow flowers/buds in spring, then changes to green leaves, but I don’t know the name.
Funny you should make a post about trees as we are dealing with “tree woes” at this very moment. Backstory…we bought our house almost 9 years ago. It is a corner lot, lined with 6 silver maples. Now, the maples are huge, and apparently the former owner petitioned the city to be allowed to plant them on the park strip (the little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road) and the city said okay. Well, first of all they are wayyyyy too big for the park strip now. They are buckling the sidewalk in several places, etc. Another bigger problem is that these trees do horribly in very alkaline soil…and I live in Utah which has extremely alkaline soil. So, all 6 of our trees have some varying degree of chlorosis (the leaves don’t turn green, they are yellow, and often brown, and they dry up and fall off much sooner). Essentially they are dying. The only way to fix this is what I like to call “throw money at the problem”. We have tried several treatments, and with 6 trees to treat it is very expensive. The most expensive treatment, but the one we hear works the best is to have a tree place come out and put an IV of chemicals into the tree! We haven’t resorted to that yet. In fact, my husband built his own IV rig last night and will be trying it today! I’m really hoping it works because we don’t want to have to deal with removing dead trees in a few years.
So, moral of the story, don’t get a silver maple if you have alkaline soil.
Do not ever get a Sweet Gum. We have one left, after taking two down. Their seeds are the worst.
I am not fond of pine needles either – nor am I fond of pine tree pollen. But there are other evergreens that aren’t so messy/allergenic.
Something else to consider is how dense the shade will be under the tree. There are trees that give you problems with growing grass under them. A little bit of shade = wonderful. Lots = bare dirt.
And that’s the most general advice I can give – not that I am all that knowledgeable about trees :-). Oh, don’t plant too close to the house. Trees DO grow, eventually. It broke my heart but we had to take down a beautiful oak tree that was too close to the house (i.e. branches on our roof). We couldn’t just prune it either – it was dangerous for our home. If only the prior owners had planted it farther away from the house…
Exactly what I was going to say: Anything but sweet gum. They’re beautiful in the fall, but those dadgummed gumballs make it dangerous and painful to walk across the yard.
We HATED our oak – took it down. It was beautiful, but the acorns were terrible. Not to mention, it really bothered us that it often wouldn’t lose its leaves until the middle of winter, so then we were raking twice a year (spring and fall). We have a magnolia tree that i love. It is a nice shape, and the flowers are beautiful (even though they only last 5-7 days). The leaves are nice shape and color.
My MIL has a neighbor with a pin oak and she HATES that it drops leaves twice a year.
Do not get a Bradford Pear. Yes, they are fast growing, yes, they are kind of nice, but I can promise you that in the foreseeable future that tree will split in half, break off a huge, limb, something. Because they grow so fast their wood is very soft. They are the worst. We have a Sweet Gum tree that provides luscious, enviable shade, but ample, non-enviable gumballs – avoid at all costs.
We bought an October Glory Maple and a Japanese maple to plant in our backyard. Have loved both! The Japanese maple is smaller, but very full.
I was going to say the same thing about Bradford trees. Lovely to look at & quick to grow so they plant them in every new neighborhood, but they will drop a limb if you sneeze on them.
Ours was missing a branch when we moved in. Another branch fell off and then finally the whole thing peeled like a banana, only the trunk left standing in the middle, during a storm. While ours was shedding pieces, our neighbor’s was doing the same thing in its own time.
Yes! Our neighbor’s Bradford pear tree split and one half landed in our driveway–fortunately while the driveway was empty.
Also, Bradford pear tree blossoms look lovely, but smell horrible. I think they must be pollinated by flies.
I just looked it up on an extension agent’s page and found this about Bradford pears:
“The fetid (stinking) flowers of Bradford pears are meant to smell like a rotting animal. This smell will attract blowfies. Bradfords use these insects to pollinate their flowers. Early bloomers, like Bradfords, may have better luck attracting flies than bees during a chilly spell. Evidently, they gave up on bees a long time ago. My guess is that nobody told you how stinking this pretty plant would be. Let me warn you ahead of time. If you buy a ginkgo tree, be sure and get a male. The female ginkgo also uses flies and beetles as pollinators. A female ginkgo makes a Bradford smell like a rose. “
We call Bradford pears “meat trees,” as in “Oh, God, the meat trees are blooming,” which just happened within the last couple of days here in the Southeast. : P
Yes! to maples and dogwoods. I concur about dogwoods’ size – I think of them as more of an in-between shrub/tree hybrid. Brugmansia are another cool flowering tree, and they grow rather quickly, but they also top out at a small size. I don’t know if they can handle winter, though.
If you’re in a climate warm enough for them, schefflera trees grow *fast* – they should be semi-far from a foundation, though, because their roots can do annoying things to them. (I live in Florida, and a lot of builders put them right next to houses here, and have created problems.)
For pine trees, I’d recommend making sure you get ones that stay full at the bottom – most of the pine trees I’ve had through my life have tended to lose their lower branches. It looks cool, but they wouldn’t be effective for privacy at all. And while gingkos do look lovely, heed Bsharp’s advice about only getting male trees! We had female ones in my dorm, and the fruiting season was pretty noxious.
Lastly, while I was checking to see whether birch trees grow slow or fast (depends on the type), I found this list of fast-growing trees which might be helpful: http://blog.arborday.org/the-fastest-fast-growing-trees/
I have to comment on the Bradford Pear. They can be lovely with all their white flowers in the spring, and they grow relatively fast. But. They have a very vertical branching structure which makes them likely to break in a thunderstorm or high winds or heavy snow/ice, causing not branches, but large chucks of tree to fall on one’s house. Yes, I have pictures. :( Also, those lovely white flowers smell like manure. Sad, but true.
Trees I like include mostly slow growers, like oaks. And I like them so much that the acorns in the mower don’t bother me; they mostly get chopped up just fine.
This is timely for me as well–we have three willow trees in our yard that are coming down soon. I’ve been wondering what to plant in their place, so I’ll be reading all the comments here carefully.
My parents had two weeping willows in their backyard which were beautiful, and perfect for climbing. But ours were planted too close to the fence and they are ruining it, plus the city trims them because they’re too close to the power lines, so they just look awful all the time.
I’d advise against pine trees; the needles get everywhere including gutters and have to be raked up so they don’t kill the grass.
We just bought a boat load of trees, so this is fresh in my mind. Granted I live in the south so not all trees that do well here will do well everywhere. First, I will never have another Sweet Gum (prickly balls fall from these and are awful) a Hack Berry (I find them ugly, no good color) or walnut (because… walnuts).
What we got:
A peach tree – self-pollinating so you only need one, and we love having fruit trees.
An Orient Pear and a Bradford pear – pear trees need a mate to pollinate.
A cherry – which needs to pollinate with another cherry which we didn’t yet get.
When picking fruit trees we tried to go with ones that the fruit was suitable for eating and not just canning or cooking, because I hate canning.
We didn’t go with apple trees because we did get some cedar trees and apparently there is something called cedar apple rust which = bad for apple trees.
We have 3 maple trees planted in the front yard. We are aiming to have as much privacy as possible in the back, and also have a very large yard, so we ordered a variety of evergreens and flowering shrubs to create a sort of growing wall that makes us feel like no one can see in our yard. Arborday.org has good info on lots of different types of trees, what grows well in what zone, speed of growth, & mature size.
Here is what else we got for the back yard, in addition to the fruit trees:
Red Maple
Blue Spruce
Red Cedars
American Arborvitae
Emerald Arborvitae – these are the very skinny evergreens that are very dense – they make a good wall
Oops, that should have said BARTLETT pear NOT Bradford.
I know zilch about trees, BUT I do know if you call your county’s extension agent and talk to him/her about the criteria you listed, they would have free expert advice (not really free, because you’ve already paid for it in your taxes). They will even let you bring them a soil sample from your yard for testing, to see what it might be most conducive to.
Also, you could do the same thing with the salespeople at a couple of nurseries where you might buy the trees, and see if any common recommendations or cautions show up. That’s all I have.
Yes! The Extension Service! I used to work at the Extension Service & there are a ton of services for gardening/yards, especially around appropriate/native plants.
We had two insanely old oak trees at our old place. They were huge and beautiful but the leaves falling twice a year was a huge pain. But I think for the shade they were worth it. We also had a walnut tree over a driveway and omg the mess on the cars was awful.
We currently have 9 pines and the pine cones drive me batty but we pay our oldest a penny per pine cone picked up and that solves most of the problem. We also have a smallish tree that is such a pretty red spring and fall but I don’t know what it is. We also have a stinky tree in the spring but the blooms are beautiful. I…don’t know what that one is either. I’m super helpful.
My dad and stepmom have a ginkgo and the leaves are fun but nearly impossible to rake. My stepmom actually has figured out when she sees a few leaves starting to fall she runs out and covers the ground with old sheets.
NO FRUIT. NO FRUIT. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FRUIT. The mess, the rot, the GIGANTIC BEES. And if you live in Chicago like we do, add in RATS AND ALL SORTS OF CRITTERS. So not worth it. Yes, the fruit is delicious, but I CAN BUY FRUIT AT THE GROCERY STORE. And our pear tree makes approximately three skrillion times more fruit than my family can consume before it starts to go bad. (Add, MESS IN FRIDGE and/or FRUIT FLIES!) I can’t stand the animals and the mess.
I do love trees, and I look forward to hearing what you end up with. And I think that fall leaf color is a NUMBER ONE priority!!!
When I was shopping for houses, I paid zero attention to trees. I tried to ask informed questions about the age of the furnace, peered into closets, pictured furniture arrangements, opened windows, etc. – but never once thought to pay attention to the trees in the yard. Which is how I became the owner of the largest sweet gum tree in North America (well, not officially, but it seems like it.) Somehow I completely overlooked the giant in the front yard and the 5 million sharp balls held among its branches that seem to drop year round. After living here 7 years, I will say the tree provides great shade, is extremely hardy and has good fall color. But I would still avoid it like the plague (not that I can imagine you purposely going out and choosing this.) It’s also the reason I want to shake all those prospective homeowners on HGTV who go on and on about stainless steel appliances and granite countertops – I always want to scream, “Forget about those and look at the trees!”
I love this comment so much, because I have the EXACT same situation. And my husband and I were just talking last night about how stupid we were when buying our first (and current) house. It really is a lovely tree, except the gum balls are a nightmare. We tried spraying it one year with something that was supposed to keep it from producing gumballs, but it didn’t work. But you are so right that it is a hardy tree. It’s survived two really bad ice storms and while our neighbors’ oaks were losing limbs left and right, the sweet gum never dropped a branch.
I second the no Bradford Pear comment. Our neighborhood has them and though they are pretty, the blossoms smell funny and that’s being diplomatic in describing the fug in the air. I think it’s a pretty universally considered not a pleasant scent because it’s an oft talked about thing here in Spring.
What if you got a few fast growing evergreens and added some dwarf burning bush shrubs for autumn color and butterfly bushes for spring and summer? Butterfly bushes don’t attract a lot of bees from what I’ve seen. They can get pretty big too.
I will second the horrible, horrible smell of Bradford pear trees. Cover your nose type bad smell.
Yep. My social circle calls them “semen trees.”
Yes. That.
Yes, a magnolia! I love them, especially the ones with the pink flowers — they’re my favorite trees in the neighborhood in the spring. Also I’ll ditto the ginkgo for great bright yellow fall foliage, and evergreens (not pines) for low maintenance and extra privacy.
We have two huge oaks, and I never understood why we had to rake so much all fall and winter and spring until this thread. So, you’re right — surprisingly useful discussion! The acorns that drop on our roof and our deck and on the hard parts of our yard so that they SUCK to step on are kinda lame too. We also have a pecan tree, which also drops LOUD pecan pods on the roof over our bedroom.
Yes, the fruit trees, especially something like pear or apple, seem like a big giant pain in the ass. My Dad had a pear tree in his yard and I thought he’d lose his MIND getting so mad at the squirrels who took every pear off that tree. We don’t have any Ash trees in our yard but a lot of people in my hood have had trouble with some tree disease with their Ash trees, or borers or something. We have maples and oaks and they are like 45 years old and giant. They provide a lot of shade in the summer and make our backyard 20 degrees cooler than the front in the summer but we also rake a shit ton of leaves all fall, but it is a fair trade to me. We had a japanese maple at our old house and it was beautiful but it was prone to bug attacks, which was pretty gross.
Hi! our maples are beautiful, lovely shade, pretty in winter aND grow fairly fast. We didn’t even buy the ones we planted, we just trasplanteD the saplings growing under our mature trees.
I HATE with passion our pine trees- the branches terrify me when it’s windy, the pine needles are a pain to clean up, the pollen is everywhere and you don’t ever want to park a vehicle near or under one unless you want to spend an ugly amount of time cleaning sap. And that sap get on everything – lawn chairs, toys, the bottom of shoes and even the DOG (Cats in your case).
For a smaller flowering tree the Dogwood is lovely and unique.
No to a river birch! I have one in my back yard and it drops long, skinny twigs all year round that are difficult to pick up. I also have some very large maples and an oak tree, which are beautiful, but involve a LOT of leaf raking each fall. I am dismayed that the snow has just melted here, reminding me of all the leaves I neglected to finish raking last year. However, they do a great job of shading my house in the summer.
We had a river birch in our last yard & it was the same…tons of twigs/sticks. We always had to pick up sticks before mowing the lawn.
Magnolias are gorgeous, but some types are very messy. One of my neighbors has one and the sidewalk underneath it actually becomes dangerous in late spring when all the petals fall off and rot. If you get an evergreen, make sure to plant it where the needles will not fall on your roof or in your gutters. We rent, and our house has a huge evergreen ( I have no idea what kind) and we have to have the landlord come out three or four times a year and sweep off the roof. We didn’t know that early on. So the middle of our second year in the place, I noticed some water on the floor near the living room windows. When I looked closer, I realized that water was streaming down from the ceiling (In my defense, that entire wall has floor to ceiling curtains covering it) Turns out, the rotting needles on the roof had actually eaten through parts of the roof and that section of the roof had to be replaced. If our landlord ever offers to just remove that tree, I will take him up on it so fast his head will spin.
I’m not in love with the trees in my yard. In my parents yard, I love the birch trees, Japanese maples, and dogwood. They are low maintenance. I also love the peach tree, but that requires a bit more care. With one peach tree, I picked off over 100 lbs of peaches one year. This is great, but only if you like to can / give away fruit. Plus you have to prop up the branches when they are laden with fruit or they will snap. Rhododendron bushes are one of my favorites for privacy and they are simple to trim back to the size you want.
Things I stay away from:
– bamboo. It can not be contained.
– willows. they get so big and too weepy.
– cherry. I have some superstitions about planting a cherry tree in the yard bringing death.
We invested in a couple of larger, more mature trees when we moved into our house on a bare lot. The nursery owner recommended Canadian Cherry and Ash. Little did we know, the Canadian Cherry is VERY susceptible to a particular fungus that makes the branches look like dog turds and eventually kills the tree. So, that one will be removed this summer and replaced with a pretty maple. The ash tree is doing very well but now the ash borers are in the United States, apparently heading our way, so who knows how long we’ll have the ash.
Our house is white with maroon-ish brick so I loved the deep maroon leaves of the Canadian Cherry. I researched trees to find a similarly colored tree and found there are some birch trees with deep maroon leaves. The shape of those won’t work for us, but I thought I’d mention it.
Growing up, we had plum trees. BAD idea. The plums were delicious but our summer shorts were covered in plum stains in the butt area. Apparently, we were unable to find a spot of grass without a plum hiding in it.
We are also looking at trees! We have a bunch of pin oaks that are all diseased and leave this nasty black mold-looking film all over everything, and we tried power-washing it away and it was back within 24 hours. So we are planning to have all those pin oaks ripped out and while we may replace some of them, we don’t know with what. They are all 15+ years old and I don’t want to stick in a bunch of itty bitty saplings but I also don’t want to pay a fortune for trees just to fill the voids where the gross sick trees got ripped up. So I’ll be watching this post closely for ideas of what to put in the replace the pin oaks, if anything.
http://treesandshrubs.about.com/od/commonshrubs/p/PurpleLeafSandC.htm
we had great success with the purple leaf sand cherry, which I believe does not actually have any cherries. Beautiful and fairly fast growing
I would recommend knowing where your sewer line is and avoid planting anywhere near it. Sure, tree roots go far… so maybe you can’t avoid it completely. But as far away as possible and still be nice for your yard.
Some successful & appealing trees I have lived with in the northeast:
Japanese Cherry — also have to rake in the Spring because the petals drop, but the pink flowers are SO GORGEOUS, it was totally worth it. No fruit.
White Birch — I like that it can have multiple trunks & the peely white bark is so pretty
Sycamore — BIG, STRONG (good for hanging tire swings) and huge, well-shaped leaves. Poor color in the fall — just crunchy brown, and they shed bark.
Oak — I really like them, but they are VERY slow-growing, require twice yearly raking, and drop acorns. I think the acorns are charming, but most do not.
Maples are also very slow-growing, but they look great with leaves and fall color right away, even though they’re small.
We planted two maples in our backyard. I looked at trees in my parents’ woods in the fall to see what color leaves they had, marked two of them, and the next spring we transplanted them. Besides guaranteeing the color, this also enabled us to get trees that had a head start on growing. We picked two of the biggest ones that were still transplantable.
So, know anyone looking to thin their trees?
I have lived at two different places with Magnolia trees of which I am EXTREMELY fond. They seem to grow quickly and into substantial trees, and provide excellent shade. However, they do drop quite a bit of…things. The leaves are large and glossy and slippery, and then whatever the fruit/pod thing that is the product of the magnolia flower. So they aren’t a tree with a lawn under them really. Still, I do love them. They are very pretty, and don’t require much maintenance insofar as pruning and what have you.
I personally don’t like the way pines look. Also they can be very sappy, which can be a pain if you have children or cats who climb trees and come in with sap covered fur.
This must depend on where you live – my parents have a magnolia in their yard in MN (northern suburb of Minneapolis/St Paul) and in 8 years it’s grown maybe 2 inches. Still tiny.
I remember my parents had crab apple trees and horse chestnut trees in their yard. The fruit was primarily used by the kids in the neighborhood as weapons. If you’ve never been beaned in the back by a spiky horse chestnut, consider yourself lucky. The trees look great, however.
I think Maple trees are gorgeous- in the summer and fall- but the growth rates might be a little too slow for what you want. If you could get a few larger Maples, it might be worth it.
Huh. I was all ready to say MAPLE, because my parents have a beautiful red maple tree that fits all your criteria: non-fussy, non-messy, has beautiful bright red flowers (seed pod thingys) in the fall that are gorgeous. But it also grew very quickly: they planted it as a sapling when my sister was two and took a picture of her next to it; by the time I was old enough to remember, so like 6-7 years later, it was taller than our house. And it’s a tall house. But plants do tend to grow quickly in New Orleans, with all the humidity and rain and partying, so maybe that’s why.
They also have crape myrtles, which are pretty and flower for a long time in spring/summer, and althea trees (also known as Rose of Sharon) which are gorgeous flowering trees and seem very low-maintenance. I suspect they thrive in more southern climates, though.
I also am a fan of Crepe Myrtles, they are my favorite tree. Dogwoods are also beautiful and the first evidence of spring. If you got a crepe myrtle and a dogwood then you might have flowers from March to August (but I’m not an expert), then fall colors from the maples until winter. I was going to suggest pine trees and maple trees even before I read your entire post. Pine needles make a fine ground covering that doesn’t involve mowing. Never having owned a house, I can’t speak to the effort involved in these trees, but pines do grow quickly and maples and crepe myrtles are beautiful. I don’t remember my parents ever caring for the maple tree or pine trees in our yard.
We have a little fruit orchard (a few apple and pear trees) that we find very satisfying, not otherwise being gardeny types. The trees require a lot of pruning but that might be because the prior owners severely abused the trees (not just neglected them).
We planted a baby quince tree and that really has been growing magnificently and fills me with joy. It’s not bearing fruit yet but I love quince fruit (the fruit stay good for a long time, can cook into applesauce and various other concoctions), and they’re pleasingly rare. You can’t just buy a quince at the store, so that adds to the cool-factor of having have quince coming from your yard. People I know with older quinces describe them as being very tough little trees.
We had mulberry trees in our yard when we moved in, and they are super gross. They weep continuously so there are messy, wet streaks all over the trunk. Also, they fruited, which I didn’t mind because it was entertaining to watch the birds and squirrels enjoy the fruit, but which I did mind because yellowjackets hung out, too, and they are mean, and vicious, and will nest in the ground, and that is an unpleasant surprise.
Male trees are tidier because they don’t fruit, but they also tend to cause an increase in allergy problems if you’re allergic to pollen.
I had fig trees and they grew quickly-ish, but were (1) soft (2) not terribly winter-hardy (3) messy in the fall (giant leaves) (4) I hear they’re very greedy and I wouldn’t want to deal with the roots of a huge fig tree. Good things: (1) yum, figs (2) the hot summer sun beating down on the leaves, I could smell the figgy leaf smell all the way inside the house, and it was glorious.
We just had a big, yucky maple taken down this fall. It was mostly dead, and the roots were evil. My yard is small, and we’re thinking of getting a little Japanese maple or two. I love the pretty leaves they have, and my neighbor’s has stayed small-ish. The only problem I’ve seen which I don’t think is a big problem at all is that in the spring there is a short period when either bees or flies are super attracted to it. I think they might be flies? It is telling that I can’t even say for sure. They stay higher up in the tree and keep to themselves, which is a huge plus.
My parents are in the Midwest and planted Silver Maples about 30 years ago. And those trees are pretty much full grown now. They grew pretty quickly. I’d say that they were a nice size in less than 10 years. And I don’t think they started with a particularly big sapling. The leaves aren’t that pretty in the fall, but aren’t ugly. They also planed a Sugar Maple maybe 10-15 years ago. That one is slow, slow growing. But it is awfully pretty in the fall. I’d splurge for a pretty big one to plant if you go that direction.
I love flowering crab apple trees for the 2 weeks or so of pretty flowers I get in the spring. Although the crab apples draw things like possums and raccoons in the fall.
We have a young magnolia that we like and we are looking forward to it growing nicely. The dogwoods are proving to be kind of fussy and I’m made to understand they are kind of short-lived for trees (like they only live 15-20 years). Similarly for white birches.
I like our maple tree a lot. I also like sweet gum maples (which turn bright yellow in fall – another commenter didn’t like their seeds, but they don’t bother me at all). I also have some Japanese maples that are beautiful most of the year and especially so in fall. I’m not sure how long they live.
I wonder if you’d like a beech tree? I don’t have one but a landscape designer I know recommends them to everyone. That and juneberry trees (though that will bring you lots of birds in June).
Our rear neighbors have an enormous pear tree that flowers beautifully every spring. In the fall it drops teeny tiny pearlets all over my yard but the sparrows come and eat every one of them and it doesn’t bother me one bit. I’ve never had a problem with a smell. I wonder what variety of pear it is?
Good luck! I love trees.
Oh, I can add about beech trees. Beech trees grow ENORMOUS and also have 6 billion beech nuts. There is one on the way to and from school and it is delightful because it’s so big we could easily both stand inside its hollowed-out trunk, but there are beech nuts all over the place and there are so many they fall pretty much all year, although mostly in the fall. But this beech tree is obviously very very old, like maybe hundreds of years, so maybe millions of beech nuts would be someone else’s problem.
I’m not sure how fast it grows, but we have a Japanese Pagoda tree that is pretty low maintenance and it’s pretty. It has seed pods that are bright yellowish green in the spring and summer and then turn reddish brown in the fall. I like the contrast of both with the tree’s dark green leaves. It drops the pods, but they are dry and papery and small, so it isn’t a problem to mow them up instead of raking.
It hardly matters that I don’t know where you live because I’m not even on the same continent (I live in the south of France), so here’s my probably-not-at-all-useful take on this. I have no garden (I live in an almost ground floor flat) but have a small (not-mine) courtyard out back. There is a large, ugly cypress tree there (about 4 meters from my kitchen door) and I HATE it. From early February to late March (yeah! end in sight!) this sucker produces pollen that gives me the WORST allergy symptoms EVER. And I’m not alone – it is now forbidden to plant any more of these things in Montpellier (the city I live in) because so many people are allergic. Now, I’m just waiting for the one out back to DIE.
Other than that, I love magnolia trees, oak trees take forever to grow, sumac trees (though possibly poisonous? I think I read that somewhere… not sure) are glorious in autumn and cherry trees are pretty, but a real hassle with regard to the fruit…
Good luck!
We have a Honey Locust, it grows fast and has that pleasing shade but not so dense that it seems dark in summer:
http://home.howstuffworks.com/define-honey-locust.htm
(They are so low maintenance that the city plants them in the streets. )
We also have a Kentucky Coffee tree which we really like BUT the leaves don’t come into full bloom until almost mid-June meaning it kind of looks dead in spring.
We took down this horrible bush in our front yard (townhouse) and had to find something relatively small to replace it. We ended up driving around the area and figuring out what we liked, then going into a local nursery that does a lot of work in our neighborhood and had the guy show us what he thought would grow well in our yard. He gave us a couple of options, and we picked a variety and a size we were comfortable spending the money on. (we ended up with a Kwanzan cherry, but we just planted it last fall so still haven’t seen it in the spring)
At another house we had a dogwood that I loved but it was old and dying and we had to have it taken down. We also had crepe myrtles, which are pretty but they get messy. And we planted a peach tree that was beautiful in the spring, had a great shape, and bore very little fruit after the first couple of years.
If we had a house with a bigger yard and room to plant I would go with maples and dogwoods.
We have a star magnolia in our front yard (it was there when we moved in and it took me weeks to figure out what type of tree it is). It blooms for about a week each spring and it’s so beautiful. It’s pretty/fine during the rest of the year, but our whole family gets excited this time of year while we wait for it to bloom. We live in northern Virginia, if that’s helpful.
When I was a teenager, my boyfriend and I planted two sycamore trees in my parents’ yard (taking the seeds from his parents’ tree) in Oklahoma, and they have shot up over the past two decades. They grew incredibly fast, even though they have had really no attention at all from my parents. They provide a lot of shade and are sturdy. They do shed bark and are not notable for beautiful fall leaves.
I see from this link: http://homeguides.sfgate.com/sycamore-trees-40884.html that sycamores grow well in a large swath of the U.S. and do well in high winds and hail.
My neighborhood has a number of lavender…trees? Bushes? I’m not sure what they are exactly, but they grow vigorously. I have these very scary loppers I use occasionally to hack off branches so that I can see to back out my car. They definitely attract big fuzzy bees, which is why Spouse and I switched parking spaces.
In my region there are land-grant universities with extension services that offer TONS of helpful info on pets, plants, pests, you name it. There’s a search at http://www.extension.org/ to find a nearby one.
(I did not read the comments so apologies for repeats) .
Flowering pears (pyrus calleryana) are very fast growing – they can be good or bad. Our neighbors have a Cleveland Select and it’s great… doesn’t stink, lots of flowers, pretty compact (tall/narrow rather than broad), purply-red in the fall. The Autumn Blaze Pear is also a good one – super hearty and bright red in fall.
The Freeman Maple grows fast and is so pretty in the fall.
Oh – I’m back because I remembered two other trees from our old house.
1) Our neighbors there had a Tricolor Beech – I have NO idea the care and maintenance but the leaves were PINK on the edges! It delighted me to no end.
2) we had an ornamental plum tree and it was AMAZING. The few fruits produced were eaten by birds before it fell, the leaves were a deep purple on top changing to more of a green underneath where they got less sun. In the spring it was COVERED in light pink flowers – so pretty! Of course it was mature when we moved in but I did very little to it… pruned a few branches each fall. I loved that tree.
I’ve never seen a tricolor beech and now I desperately want one. What a pretty tree!
Well, I don’t know what area of the country you live in, but I can tell you that I love in the Northern California/SF Bay Area and we have lots of beautiful Monterey Pine trees growning on our property and we love them. They are fast growing, evergreen with pinecones (which our little boys LOVE and are constantly thinking up games and crafts to do with them) and they are EASY easy easy! We are in a severe drought here and the trees are fine, so water isnt an issue. The only downside is the needlesthey drop, but we dont have a “lawn” in the manicured, suburban sense, so it doesnt bother me to have a bunch of pine needles on the ground. Someone more fastidious about their outdoor space might find the needles a nuisance. All in all, I think Moterey pines are great!
We took out an apple tree in our yard because it wasn’t a *nice* apple tree. It gave small, sour, wormy apples, and they rotted and brought bees. But we kept our Italian plum tree, which is very pretty and also gives a huge amount of beautiful purple plums that we turn into jam and fruit leather and chutney and cakes. So YMMV on fruit.
I love Japanese maples, which are beautiful year-round: bright red foliage as if it were autumn all the time. And they come in different heights. Birch trees have that pretty silvery bark, which is also pretty year-round. Dogwood looks pretty ordinary for most of the year, but in spring it looks just like a big flock of butterflies.
We have a decorative cherry tree in the back yard, which I DETEST. The blooms make everyone sneeze in the spring, the cherries are useless and STICKY – they get in the dog’s hair, they are hard to get off the deck, and when the cherry part rots away, we’re left with the pits which are, well, the pits. You’re not supposed to eat them, so I have to repeatedly tell the kids not to put these kinds of cherries in their mouths.
We have a Japanese Maple Tree in the front yard that I ADORE – not the close-to-the-ground bush kind, but a full-on big tree. It is beautiful in the summer (red/green leaves) and absolutely gorgeous in the fall (red/orange leaves). Plus, it has those awesome helicopter seed pods that the kids love to play with. We are in the Pacific NW, by the way.
Our HOA (DC area) actually has banned Bradford Pears due to the issues mentioned in several comments.
We have a Crepe Myrtle – they are very pretty and relatively low maintenance, just have to cut the little offshoot branches towards the bottom – BUT as pretty as those flowers are, they also will stain your whole life if they get tracked in your house.
I would skip anything that drops needles. You might not mind losing grass, but they are absolutely horrible to rake up. We have one behind our fence on common property (ie, can’t get rid of it) and it drops about a zillion needs in our backyard. I end up bagging several bags of needles every spring and our backyard is about 15′ square.
I haven’t read all the comments, but I just wanted to chime in that buying a little bit bigger tree in the beginning might save you the money of replacing said tree twice, due to not babying it enough. Or that might just be my luck with crab apple trees. We are on tree number 3 (this time a 2 inch trunk) after 2 trees with 1 inch trunks died after a year. This is the first spring it has been in the ground, so we are definitely not out of the woods yet (ha! tree humor!), but it is budding now, so I am taking that as a good sign.
Another vote for Bradford pears. Gorgeous white flowers in spring, glossy red leaves in fall, fast growing. Mine make me so happy.
Have you considered an American Elm? It’s a little plain, but I think it ticks all your boxes. I live in the Canadian prairies and we have lots of them here. They’re very hardy and grow pretty fast. They’re also great shade trees.
Swistle & commenters,
I know nothing about trees, but yours is the only blog where not only will I read an entire blog post about something I’m not even interested in, I will spend half an hour reading the comments too. Thanks for your writing and creating such a fun community here.
HA! This. My husband “what are you reading?…..why?? we just planted a tree? Why do you care?”
Me too! This is so educational!!
My husband and I both have a thing for Japanese maples. If we have to replace any of our trees, that’s on our short list.
Also, we have something that flowers (dark red leaves year-round) and when it flowered I thought oh how pretty! Then the flowers turned into berries and attracted a lot of birds. It wouldn’t have been a problem but that was where we’d placed the slide portion of the kids’ play structure, which got covered in rotting berries and the poop of birds that dined on a lot of berries. Something to consider.
I’m partial to maple trees for color/looks/longevity. But, when we moved to our current house the previous owners had planted a tulip tree, which /i had never heard of. It does flower, but these are small beautiful purple blooms that do not require raking. The leaves are large and give wonderful shade. Also, I don’t know for sure about growing speed, but I do know that the previous owners were only in this house for 16 years and that they planted it not too long before they moved (because the lady wanted to dig it up and take it with her. Um. No) and that now it is a very nicely sized tree.
Oh, and we are upstate NY
Let me preface by saying that I live in Colorado, high-ish altitude. Zone 5, as far as landscaping/plant hardiness is concerned.
We planted a Colorado Blue Spruce in our yard when we bought our house 4 years ago. It was 6 feet tall at the time, and now is easily 10+ feet tall. 1 foot of growth/year seems like good, fast growth to me. And it’s blocking our view of the neighbors’ windows quite nicely.
At our last house (same geographical area), we had some ornamental pear trees that I LOVED. Since they were ornamental, we got all the benefits of a BEAUTIFUL flowering tree, without any of the pain in the ass of a fruit tree. They were low maintenance; thrived with regular watering and zero other attention paid to them. They were basically the perfect tree. And then the people we sold our house to failed to water them at all, and the trees died. I’m perhaps unreasonably sad about that. (But we did plant another ornamental pear in the yard at our new house, so I still get to enjoy the tree, even if the ones I loved at the old house are dead.)
This is SO INTERESTING. I can’t add much, except to counsel against cottonwoods. I have seen no one mention them, so perhaps that means people aren’t even planting them anymore? But anyway, they grow fast and get huge and die young, so you end up with a giant tree that is susceptible to dropping huge branches on your house. My sister just had to have one removed from her backyard. Also, they shed cottony seeds which get everywhere, clog your HVAC unit and give lots of people terrible allergies.
Oh yes, I second your no cottonwoods recommendation. My parents have a neighbor 4 houses away that has one, and for several weeks every year it looks like it’s snowed in the neighborhood. You can actually sweep or scoop up the giant piles of cottony mess the tree drops – and it blows in the wind for blocks. Anyone with a pool or hot tub within a mile radius will also hate you if you plant one.
I have several different maples in my yard and two small pines. The maples are gorgeous come the fall and the pines are pretty covered in snow. I hide my bird feeders among the pines. It’s quite lovely.
My old house had oaks maples and a cherry as well as a flowering something or other. Acorns bang on the roof, the hit you in the head which can hurt although not too terribly and it’s easy to roll your ankle on them. I loved my cherry tree. It flowered in spring and the fruit was good. Very little to maintain that one. Maples I mentioned I love. The flowing something was beautiful and smelled wonderful but dropped nasty inedible fruit that was messy and attracted bees something terrible.
I love my dogwood, I want a Japanese maple, I took out my Bradford pear and flowering crabapple trees, and my mountain ash died. But if it hadn’t died, I would still be loving the mountain ash. It was so pretty and delicate in the fall.
I love the look of hawthorn trees with their red berries in the winter, but they have killer thorns on the branches. My child tossed a $5 ball and it hit a branch and popped the ball. It too is gone. A previous house of mine had a Russian olive. Gorgeous silver-green foliage, but the most deadly thorns I have ever seen.
I have been super happy with a hibiscus hybrid tree. Its blooms aren’t as big as a rose of Sharon, but they are plentiful all summer. They have no odor and no debris, and they handle winds much better than a Bradford (or callery) pear.
Arbor vitae is so awesome for privacy and a non-debris forming evergreen. The only thing about them is they are susceptible to frost burn in Polar Vortex type conditions which turns the leaves rusty brown until they die off and are replaced by new growth.
I love birches, but they are really picky about the acidity of the soil and just aren’t happy where I live. The only thing I would never plant is bamboo, because it has invasive roots and is really hard to eradicate once it takes off.
We have a pine tree in the backyard, something shaped like a Christmas tree. It’s branches go nearly to the ground, and it only drops needles directly beneath it, so not a lawn problem. It’s only now I’ve realized I don’t know what it is or how big it will get. It was so fun when tiny, to decorate with birdseed pine cones and lights at Christmas. But no shade.
Always think big when deciding where to plant. It’s so easy to plant your trees too close to the house or sidewalk or driveway or too close to each other when they are tiny baby trees.
Yes to how awful Bradford pears are. Some years the smell is worse than others. When opening the window to the smell of rotting animal carcass, I’m tempted to chainsaw down the neighborhood Bradford pears in the dead of night.
Our oaks and pecan are big and beautiful, give a ton of shade, (and don’t grow grass beneath them,) but they are ancient. It would take a long time to start now. I don’t mind the acorns. The kids like them for crafts, and squirrels come in droves. Or flocks? What to you call 20 squirrels?
I envy the colors of the neighbors maples, and would like to add a little Japanese maple somewhere if we can find space. There are ornamental Apple and cherry trees in our area which are very pretty in spring, no bad smell either.
If I were in the north, I would have a lilac shrub/tree, miss that beautiful smell. And no mulberry trees. The fruit is usually too high up to pick, so there are berry stains and pink birdpoop everywhere, and if you do reach some fruit, it is insipid and bland.
We just planted two pin oaks. They grow more quickly than most other oaks yet stay moderately sized, have a beautiful shape, a stronger root system so they won’t topple, and don’t produce acorns for quite some time. Also, we love our vine maples. More of a large shrub than a tree but they grow quickly, have beautiful color, can grow well as an understory plant and are native here. My take home from this is to see what interesting trees are native. You’ll likely spend less money and will have a tree that grows well.
I second the recommendation for a honey locust tree. We have one in the city’s right of way, and it’s virtually maintenance free. The leaves are yellow and tiny in the fall, so there’s really no raking to be done because they blow away so easily. In 11 years, it’s become a nice mature tree. Nothing fancy.
I live in Oregon, and we have a very large maple in the back yard. I think it’s original to our 1955 ranch house. We all hate this tree, because it is INFESTED with box elder bugs. They are the grossest, weird little bugs. I can’t figure out what they do, except come in your house and look creepy. They like all varieties of maple and ash trees. YUCK.
That’s interesting. I’ve always called them maple bugs here (Saskatchewan) and they are just as happy to live on the side of your house (and get squished in the door jamb, GAG) as to live in a tree.
“The tree does not need to be hip.” This should be stitched on a pillow or put on a t-shirt or something. I live in a warm climate and since you’ve mentioned snow before probably nothing I recommend would work for you. I think all the trees in my yard come from the sub tropics except for a walnut tree (messy) and oaks (which I like but they can be messy too). When I lived in a cooler climate there were a lot of pecan trees. These were messy too but people would actually pick up the pecans and make pies and such. That could be a fun activity or it could be one extra chore that quickly becomes tedious.
Honey locusts are lovely. The ones around here (eastern Canada) often have flowers that smell like perfume I would like to bath in. And I’m not a perfume wearer normally.
We have lots of pines – but we live in a Rocky Mountain State at about 5,000 feet altitude. We are not really big on lawns and don’t mind the pine needles. They are very low maintenance and provide us with privacy. We also have lilac trees and they are gorgeous in Spring but then the leaves turn kind of purplish brown for the summer and fall. I’d prefer green leaves in the summer. Our lilac hedge is amazing. Beautiful lilacs and then lush green bushes all summer. Lots of privacy from those. We keep them trimmed but they are over 7 feet tall. But in the winter they lose their leaves and we lose our privacy on that side of our lot.
I haven’t read the comments, but I will talk about the only tree I would avoid-the cottonwood. I doubt if it would be a choice, although I do think it is quick growing. Terrible sticky pods, the only thing I am actually allergic to-the seeds go out like freaking weeds, hard to get rid of. I hate the thought of cutting down trees, but when my husband wanted to rid our yard of them, I was ecstatic. The dogs still get the sticky pods on their feet, the pods travel from the neighbor’s yard.
I implore you to first research what is native to your region. Entire ecosystems of bugs, birds and butterflies depend on the plants and trees with which they have coevolved. A non-native tree may be pretty but may also be worthless in supporting dependent species. So start there to whittle it down and then buy the biggest you can afford. Worth the money for sure.
Our next door neighbors have a mulberry tree, and i hate that tree with every fiber of my being. It drops messy fruit all over our yard and house, and it keep breaking giant branches off of it onto our house as well. HATE!
We live in a really old neighborhood and have a smallish yard with a maple in the front and a maple in the back, and since they’re really big, they completely keep any grass or other plants from growing anywhere near them. That’s probably not going to be a concern if you’re not going to live there long enough for them to get huge, but JUST in case….
I don’t have any pleasant experiences of particular trees in my yard, but until recently I lived in a small town in the midwest that was the Maple Leaf CIty. For years and years, everyone in town has planted a certain kind of maple- it had to be a Flaming Maple- and as a result the entire town is breathtaking in October, like wreck your car while gawking at leaves breathtaking. Every government building, school, residence, and business is obsessed with planting those trees. So I can attest that the Flaming Maple is beautiful, but that it also causes lots of raking once it gets to be a decent size.
This has been so educational! I learn more on this blog than anywhere else on the world wide web.
I live in Australia but still can’t resist providing a tree report, no matter how irrelevant to you. We have an ornamental plum tree and it is absolutely gorgeous when it flowers in spring, and the leaves are a lovely purple for the rest of the year. We do prune it but mainly because we have a small yard. No fruit to drop, and no real mess from the flowers either.
Yes, I’ve heard of that here, but it’s just called flowering plum. I don’t know why! They are lovely.
Great thread, so interesting!
I’m another Cottonwood hater – I wanted to add that their roots are wicked!! A serious tripping hazard and they totally messed up our sprinkler system.
A tree no one has mentioned so far are Aspens. We planted a row of them against our fence of our last house (approx. 12 inches tall) and within 5 years, we had total privacy from our neighbors. My favorite part of those trees was that they made the coolest sound when it was breezy. I loved just sitting in the backyard and listening to them. My husband hated how baby Aspens were constantly popping up everywhere in our yard (and neighbors yards), but it was easy to go over them with the lawn mower, so I didn’t think it was a big deal. One of our neighbors would make passive aggressive comments about it at least once a year, though.
(You are required to write a follow up to this post!!)
We had cottonwood on our property growing up. They’re okay from a distance, but in the spring they burst loose from these little pods that are horribly sticky with an awful sap. We tracked them in on our shoes, and our mother hated the cleanup that came from them. They got all over the paint on the car, too. The cottonwood fluff season is always at Memorial Day. The little boys in the neighborhood used to like to find piles of it and light them on fire. To me they’re nothing but a nuisance tree for the homeowner, but they do fill an ecological niche in stabilizing sand in a dune ecosystem because their roots are so tenacious and they don’t need much from the soil.
We have two trees in our backyard that provide wonderful shade but drop things what feels like three-quarters of the year. Leaves! Little flowers! Seed pods! Seeds! Leaves again! It is insane. I don’t remember what kind of trees they are, but they are incredibly frustrating.
Our neighbor has an enormous pine that drops not just needles but also small branches over our fence and it’s a beautiful tree to look at, with some nice shade, but the cleanup really is a pain. We get high winds where I live and pine twigs are light enough that they will blow all over the yard.
The trees we have that I love are the pit fruits – peaches and nectarines. The blossoms are beautiful, the leaves fall but are cake to clean up (I don’t recall ever actually having to clean them up, but they fall over our yard, not our patio), they look romantic in the winter when there are no leaves, and I like peaches. But also, as I discovered when our nectarine failed to bear fruit three years in a row, you can get varieties that are purely ornamental – as in, they blossom beautifully but don’t fruit. I was pretty bummed because I love nectarines more than peaches, but if I had to plant a new tree (say, to replace the horrible ficus in our front yard) I would probably go with an ornamental nectarine again because that tree gets no attention except a yearly trim and water from our sprinklers, and I only have to think about it when it’s blossoming beautifully in the springtime.
I think a maple tree would do nicely for you. I wish that Ed’s grandfather had put as much thought in to this as you are. We have a gigantic horse chestnut tree in our yard, and while the shade is nice, the debris sure is not. Ugly leaves, ugly flowers, ugly all of it. But we lost our big maple tree after the big storm we had in 2006, so it’s either keep the chestnut tree or lose ALL shade in our yard.
The only thing I can suggest is that Sugar Maples and Black Maples turn gorgeous fall colors. Norway Maples are the ones that turn blah brown, and, in fact, are an invasive species. Sugar Maples are the prettiest, though, I think. And they don’t have nuts or fruit, just helicopter seed pods. But I have no idea how hard they are to take care of, how fast they grow, how expensive they are, etc.
EVERY tree has a downside, so pick what you like. That’s what I’ve found since I started researching trees to replace the floundering maple on our lawn extension. Our town currently dissuades homeowners from planting Maples because they are so ubiquitous- even invasive. The other problem with Maples is that if a Maple disease comes along, there is not enough tree diversity for many areas, and the greater majority of trees will be wiped out. Our region essentially lost all of our Ash trees due to the ash borer.
I love nearly all trees, but would try to AVOID TREES THAT PRODUCE CANES OR SHOOTS – (unless you are trying to reforest) like Bradford pear, the shoots will be a perennial problem.
I chose the Bradford Pear for our old house, and besides the shoots, I couldn’t believe the stench produced by the blooms on the tree. Two years in a row, I thought that perhaps some animal had gotten in our garage and died. I emptied the entire garage, scrubbed the floors, sent my husband into the attic. Then I realized that the rotting seafood/dog waste smell was stronger on the side of the garage nearest to the tree. A little googling led to what everyone else here seems to know about the tree already. The second year, I still emptied the garage because the smell was worse, if possible; and I thought, it can’t be the tree, but it was!
Look for a dozen trees that you genuinely like, look-up what the reality of having that tree would be, and choose a few that you can live with. Try to choose at least one tree that is different from the rest.
My very favorite are Bradford Pear, a flowering tree (no fruits, though) that has white flowers in the spring and bright, fiery red leaves in the fall. I grew up in a mountainous temperate zone and my favorite thing about the red leaves was that they turned a lot later than almost all other trees, usually after the snow fell, so while every other house on the street was sad and gray and leaf-less we had 6 trees of bright red leaves that eventually fell off and blew away over the frozen snowy ground, no raking necessary. Win win! I don’t think we ever pruned them after the first 5 years, trying to make sure it branched high enough so walk underneath it, but after that? Nada.
xox
My father, who is a tree expert by profession, refers to Bradford Pears as “The Worst kind of tree”. While they are quite pretty, many people are highly allergic to then when they are in bloom and they get damaged easily in storms.
I don’t have personal experience owning one, and I suspect their could be a lot of fallout from the blossoms to deal with, but I fantasize about having my own Magnolia. They are so beautiful.
I love Maples too, I do think it would be worth paying for a large(er) one!
I’m curious as to why the few who have said the Bradford Pear is their favourite aren’t bothered by the smell.
We’ve planted 10 trees over the four years on our newly-built house. Here’s what I’ve observed that I think may help you:
1) Autumn Blaze Maple – grows fast! Good autumn color, although a Sugar Maple is still prettier.
2) Ironically: the smaller the diameter of the trunk when the tree was purchased, the faster it seems to have grown. The biggest tree on our lot (out of the 6 original trees + 4 additional trees planted over four years) was also the smallest when it was planted. I read something in a Martha Stewart magazine about planting trees when the trunks are less than 1.5 inches in diameter to avoid transplant shock, and that would hold true based on our experience.
We have lots of Bradford pears here in the southeast, but I wouldn’t recommend them for the reasons already stated by others, but they don’t stink to me. I didn’t realize that they smelled so bad to others.
Dogwoods: They are gorgeous and low maintenance, but don’t get very large. I love the flowers in spring.
Japanese Maple: My mother-in-law has a large one in her front yard that is also beautiful, especially in the fall and is a great tree climbing tree. No bugs in it here.
Pin Oak: We have one in our backyard and it does drop acorns, but they are small and haven’t bothered us.
Black Gum: We have several in a front yard (which has no grass) and they shed tons and tons of golf ball sized seed balls. The balls are rather cool looking though.
Magnolia: Our neighbor has one and there are quite a few around. They are so pretty, but do drop a good amount of leaves. The leaves are heavy and waxy, so they tend to just lay right under the tree and not blow around. They take longer to decompose too.
American Holly: This is a tree, not a bush like most hollies and I HATE it. We have one in our backyard and it sheds it’s leaves every spring and it has thorny leaves that HURT LIKE CRAZY to step on in your bare feet.
Crepe Myrtle: Actually a large shrub, not a tree. Gets very tall if not pruned though and are often pruned incorrectly. They look sad if they don’t get enough water. They flower in the summer and are pretty, but the flowers drop all over.
Brodie Cedar: We just planted these along our back fence. They are evergreen. We just planted them this past fall, so all I can say is that one of three that we planted didn’t like the wet winter we had and its turning brown.
Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima): DO NOT PLANT THIS. We had this in the back of last house and it was terrible. It sent up suckers all throughout the yard trying to spread that we were constantly pulling out. HIGHLY INVASIVE.
I have an ornamental flowering plum tree that I love dearly. It’s similar to the more common flowering cherry trees you see, but the flowers are a deeper pink and the leaves are a deep red when they first come in. It flowers early here (Seattle) so it’s often one of the first signs of spring, and the leaves are pretty in the fall, too. Not fiery and magnificent like maples, but yellow and orange and pretty. I’ve no idea about growth rate–mine is 25 years old and was already quite big when I bought the house 13 years ago, but I have no idea how big it was when planted. I’m guessing not very big, so perhaps they do grow somewhat quickly. Anyway, flowering plum = love.
I grew up in upstate New York and some of my favorite trees are:
birches and beeches – their long, slim trunks are so graceful and they have a beautiful color.
Black locust – quick growing, beautiful fragrant flowers in the spring, and very strong wood.
quaking aspen – their leaves quiver in the slightest breeze, with a lovely effect
Linden/basswood/tillia trees (many names for the same tree) – this tree is quick growing, has beautiful leaves, and according to wikipedia ‘is a recommended ornamental tree when shade or a mass of foliage is desired’. My husband built our kids a treehouse in a stand of basswood trees, and in the summer the foliage is so thick you can hardly see the treehouse. I love it.
I get lost in the comments sections of your posts all the time – they are so much fun!
Autumn Brilliance Maple…they are just gorgeous! I am also a big fan of mountain ash, but they need a good amount of water, so soil is a factor.
We had a Japanese cherry tree (the prettiest pink blossoms in the spring, the prettiest dark purple leaves most of the year, edible but not annoying fruit) and a pale pink Camelia bush at our old house. I loved them so much I’m planting them at our new house.
My favourite in fall and winter is a mountain ash. Pretty leaves and pretty berries when the leaves are gone. They attract birds too!
No one mentioned my favorite tree- Golden Rain Tree. The leaves are so pretty in the fall. My first school had one and I remember how cool the fall was and how I had never seen one. But they are normal for Missouri, I just hadn’t seen one.
Ash trees are nice and shady and fast but I’m the Midwest, emerald ash borer bugs are a big problem.
I advise you to plant what’s local.
Or a sugar maple. Those are the best and they seem local to lots of the U.S.
I have learned so much about interesting trees that don’t grow in Vancouver!
Anyway, we have a red maple in our yard. New leaves are BRIGHT red, and fade to a darker red/purple for the year, then turn a bit more greenish-red in the fall. It’s quite pretty, makes a nice umbrella shape now that it’s so big.
We also have a horse chestnut (aka conker) tree and I would strenuously advise against it. It makes a mess ALL YEAR long. It makes decent flowers but then they fall off and make a huge mess. Then it makes these awful spike-covered fruits that drop and litter up your lawn. The conkers inside the spiky balls aren’t even real chestnuts and are poisonous so you get this giant mess with zero reward. And if you don’t find all the conkers then next year you have many little tiny trees growing in your lawn. I despise that tree with all my being, but our city has a tree bylaw and I am not allowed to cut down mature trees even in my own freaking yard. Not even if I promise to replace it with another tree – which I would do. It frustrates me to no end because on balance our yard now contributes to city green-ness as it was PAVED when we bought the house. Now it’s a lovely garden. Why can I not remove a hated tree from MY OWN YARD?? ARGH.
We also have a contorted filbert tree. It doesn’t look like much in the summer (green, tree-like) but in the winter when it has no leaves, you can see all the twisted, contorted branches and it’s like a piece of modern art got plonked in your yard. I like it. It’s more bush-like, though. I’m not sure it will grow to be super tall, so I guess it depends what you want.
I can’t read the 118 replies in front of me, but I wanted to say that I saw an ornamental plum tree in Colorado and it was so beautiful and if I could have one in Florida, I would. So that’s my suggestion.
I know I’m way late on this, but just wanted to echo others’ comments on the evil sweet gum tree. They drop these ping pong sized prickly balls EVERYWHERE. The kids have hurt themselves stepping on them and they are a pain in the butt to pick up (but if you don’t, you will jack up your lawn mower). AVOID AVOID AVOID.
I’m planting azaleas everywhere this year and I am so excited. Yay spring!