Published: November 14, 2008 06:06 pm            

Extension Service – Landscaping tips

On Oct. 21, Bryce Lane of N.C. State University’s Department of Horticultural Science and UNC-TV’s “In the Garden with Bryce Lane” spoke at the N.C. Zoo. For those of you who didn’t make it to his talk, I wanted to pass along the names of the plants he suggested in his talk about small trees.

One principal of landscape design is to choose plants that are well suited to the locations where you plan to plant it.

The mature size of a plant is a major considerations – like puppies grow up to be dogs, little containerized plants from the nursery grow up to be larger plants most of the time and it is typically wise to find out how large that plant is going to get.

When plants outgrow their space, they can be pruned, but pruning to the extent that is necessary to keep a plant in the space where it is planted may result in some unhealthy pruning strategies and/or an unattractive plant. Small trees can be used in places a tree is desired but the space is not wide and/or tall enough for an oak or a maple, for example. Some small trees are better suited to our climate than others.

The first small tree that Bryce suggested was the Japanese maple (Acer palmatum). There are over 700 cultivars (cultivated varieties) of this tree. They differ in height, leaf shape, leaf color and bark color, to name a few attributes. Some he specifically mentioned are “Tamukeyama,” “Bloodgood” and “Margaret Bee” (a.k.a Margaret B), all of which have burgundy foliage and not just during the fall. “Viridis,” in contrast, has green foliage. “Seiryu” is also green during most of the season and has interesting fall colors.

Another tree with a number of different cultivars available is our native redbud (“Cercis canadensis”). For some “fall color” throughout the growing season, “Forest Pansy” has purple leaves, while “Hearts of Gold” has yellow-green leaves. The leaves of “Floating Clouds” are variegated (leaves have white and green on them). “Traveller” is a weeping cultivar with leathery leaves and is actually a cultivar of the natural variety. The “Oklahoma” redbud is also considered by some to be of the canadensis texensis variety. “Oklahoma” has waxy leaves and is particularly drought tolerant.

If you like native trees, another one you might try the red buckeye (“Aesculus pavia”). These have attractive red flowers in the spring. However, be aware that this is one of the larger of the “small” trees: It can grow to a height of 30 feet over time.

As a substitute for the sometimes-struggling native flowering dogwood (“Cornus florida”), Bryce suggested the “Spring Glow” cultivar of Cornelian cherry dogwood (“Cornus mas”), although the flowers are quite different from our native dogwood. If you want flowers that are similar to those of the native dogwood, you might also consider the Kousa dogwood (“Cornus kousa”) as a substitute. As a bonus, it has edible fruit that can be made into jam. If you like variegated leaves, you might try “Wolf Eyes.”

I’ll provide the names of some more small trees for the landscape in next month’s article. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!



Mary Helen Ferguson is a horticulture agent with the Randolph County Center of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service in Asheboro. She can be reached at (336) 318-6003.

        

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