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Tag: Flowering Trees

Simply Beautiful Stewartia

In spring, when everything bursts into flower, the world is full of trees in bloom.  But springtime is also the time to plan and plant ahead for the season, anticipating flowering trees and shrubs with a different time of bloom, like Stewartias. Their large, ivory, Camellia-like flowers would be worthy of a spring show, but they arrive in late summer when gardens are in need of their beauty.

The fact is, stewartias are welcome landscape additions at just about any time, and you can find one to fit just about any size garden. They are also plants that are showy in all seasons, whether in flower or not. Their mottled bark and beautiful statuesque habits are always lovely, and in the fall you can anticipate colorful leaves. Here are some of the best of these well-behaved Asian trees and shrubs.

Japanese Stewartia

Bees pollinate the blooms of Japanese Stewartia and other species.

If you have the room, Japanese stewartia (Stewartia japonica) is an all-around great tree that offers four seasons of interest. Growing between 20 and 40 feet tall, with a pyramidal canopy, its branches have slightly toothed, ovoid leaves that are a cooling dark green during the growing season. In the fall, they flame up in shades of yellow, red, and burgundy, putting on a great show.

Before all of that foliage drama, Japanese stewartia flaunts its family relationship with camellias by pumping out beautiful, white, Camellia-like flowers.  Each bloom is at least 2 inches wide and features five to eight petals surrounding a center of golden-orange stamens. While only minimally fragrant, the flowers are maximally elegant and borne abundantly on trees that are hardy to USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 5-8. 

Japanese Stewartia develops fantastic mottled bark as it ages.

In the colder months, when both leaves and flowers are things of the past, Japanese stewartia continues to shine with multi-colored, exfoliating bark.  This bark, which peels gradually from the tree, looks a little like camouflage, but a lot more interesting, with patches of gray, sepia, tawny orange-brown, and taupe covering the trunk. It is a feast for the eyes at all times, but especially in seasons when visual interest may be at a premium.

Tall Stewartia

The large-leaved tall stewartia can reach 25 feet at maturity.

Tall stewartia (Stewartia monodelpha) is another native of Japan, hardy to USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 6-8, with characteristics similar to those of Japanese stewartia.  Young plants have a somewhat shrubby habit, but assume a tree form with age, reaching up to 25 feet tall in height.  Tall stewartia features large, dark-green leaves that turn deep red in the fall.  The bark does not exfoliate as colorfully as that of Japanese stewartia, but as the tree ages, the bark smoothes out and turns a stunning shade of cinnamon brown. The camellia-like flowers are more cupped in shape than those of other stewartias and sport attractive anthers in their centers.

Chinese Stewartia

Chinese stewartia is relatively compact. (Image by Kathering Wagner-Reiss)

Chinese stewartia (Stewartia sinenesis), which is hardy to Zones 5-7, can be grown in tree or shrub form.  Left to its own devices, it will reach 15 to 25 feet tall, but like other stewartias, it can be kept smaller when pruned after flowering.  The white flowers are somewhat smaller than those of Japanese stewartia but are profuse and surrounded by leaves that are reddish when emerging in spring, dark green in summer, and red again in the fall.  The cinnamon-brown bark exfoliates in strips to reveal smooth, tan underbark, sometimes with pinkish overtones. 

Mountain Stewartia

The  Asian stewartias have American cousins, the best known is Stewartia ovata, sometimes known as mountain stewartia or mountain camellia.  Native to the southeastern United States, and hardy to Zones 5-9, it is a little smaller than Japanese stewartia with a height and spread of 10 to 15 feet.  It also excels in versatility because it can be grown as a tree or a multi-stemmed shrub.  Like its Japanese relative and true to its common name, it features Camellia-like flowers and leaves that glow red and orange in the fall.  Its gray-brown bark, while attractively ridged and furrowed, does not exfoliate like that of the Japanese species.  Still, for those hankering for stewartias, but confined to smaller spaces, mountain stewartia is an excellent choice.

Stewartia Relatives

Franklinia blooms are attractive to lots of different pollinators.

Stewartia and camellia are both members of the Theaceae or tea family.  Their equally beautiful relatives include the all-American Franklinia tree (Franklinia alatamaha), which was discovered in Colonial America and now extinct in the wild. Specimens of this beautiful small tree can be found at many botanical gardens and arboreta. They are also available at select garden centers.

All the stewartias make excellent stand-alone specimens, but can also anchor partly shaded garden beds, and situations that resemble their native habitats at the edges of wooded areas. They thrive best in rich, consistently moist soil and locations that are protected from harsh winds.  To get a young specimen off to a good start, mix the soil in the planting hole with a nutritious soil amendment like Fafard Premium Topsoil, which is ideal for boosting the soil of newly planted trees and shrubs.  Water regularly while the plants establish sturdy root systems and mulch generously around, but not touching the plants’ trunks or main stems.

Japanese Flowering Cherries for Every Yard and Garden

A Historic Spring Gift

Best Japanese Flowering Cherry Trees Featured Image

In 1912, the people of Japan donated over 3,000 flowering cherry trees to the people of the United States as a gift of enduring friendship. Planted around and near the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., the trees delighted visitors and gave birth to a festive seasonal tradition. It is no surprise that home gardeners clamored for Japanese cherry trees.

Most of us don’t have room for the kind of large-scale cherry tree plantings that wow Washington visitors, but even a single tree can put on a glorious garden show. Some dwarf varieties will even flourish in large containers, a boon to gardeners with limited space.

Flowering Cherry Basics

'Kwanzan' cherry trees
The double flowers of ‘Kwanzan’ cherries often bloom in late April or May.

Cherry trees belong to the genus Prunus, which is part of the rose family, Rosaceae.  Some are commercially important for fruit production, but the famous Japanese cherry trees are just grown for their flowers. These include several species native to Japan, and other areas of Asia, that produce glorious single or double spring blooms in shades of pink, rose, and white. 

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Which Japanese flowering cherries are best for your garden?  Size, growth habit (upright or weeping), flowering time, and blossom color or configuration are the most frequent criteria for tree selection. All flowering cherries have similar cultural needs, which include sunny locations, well-drained soil and (preferably) shelter from damaging winds. No matter which cherry you choose, give it a good start by filling the planting hole with soil amended with Fafard® Premium Natural & Organic Compost. (Click here for a full tutorial on how to plant trees and shrubs.) Young trees also need regular watering while they establish root systems  and may require support to keep them upright during the first year.

The following are among the loveliest and most popular flowering cherry choices.

Sargent’s cherry (Prunus sargentii, Zones 4-7, 20-30 feet)

Sargent's cherry trees
Sargent’s cherry has pretty pink spring flowers and glowing fall leaf color.

Sargent cherry is famed for providing multi-season interest. Its bark is remarkable—a rich, lustrous shade of reddish-brown, marked by horizontal striations. The mid-spring blooms are usually soft pink to deep rose and may be single or semi-double on trees with rounded crowns. When the flowers fade, toothed, oval leaves appear in a shade of shiny dark green. In fall, those leaves turn bronze to red. 

The Sargent cherry hybrid ‘Accolade’, is a popular variety with rose-pink buds that open to soft pink, semi-double flowers. Its fall leaves turn shades of orange and yellow.

Japanese flowering cherry (Prunus serrulata, Zones 5-8, 15-35 feet)

Prunus serrulata cherry tree
Prunus serrulata is the latest of the flowering cherries to bloom.

Among the most popular Japanese cherries, Prunus serrulata is not usually sold in species form. Instead, merchants offer grafted or non-grafted varieties, like the extremely popular, double-flowered ‘Kwanzan’.  Mature trees generally have a rounded or vase-shaped habit. While the mid- to late-spring flowers are the main attraction, the foliage is also appealing, with a reddish cast in spring, followed by glossy green summer leaves that turn red to bronze in autumn. The variety, ‘Amanogawa’, features a space-saving columnar habit and fragrant, shell-pink flowers. ‘Shirofugen’ is another fragrant variety with near-white double flowers. ‘Shirotae’, sometimes known as ‘Mt. Fuji’, is also popular and widely available.  Its flowers are palest pink to white, semi-double, and fragrant.

Higan cherry (Prunus subhirtella, Zones 4-8, 20-30 feet)

Higan cherry trees
Higan cherry has white or pale-pink flowers that bloom quite early.

Higan or spring cherry is rarely available in species form. One of the best-known varieties is ‘Autumnalis Rosea’, which produces double pink flowers in early to mid-spring and a smaller number of blooms in the fall, leading some people to think the tree is suffering from seasonal confusion! Tree guru Dr. Michael Dirr, Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia, characterizes Prunus subhirtella as “among the most cold-,  heat-, and stress-tolerant [of the] ornamental cherries.”

Weeping Higan cherry (Prunus pendula, Zones 5-8, 15-25 feet)

Weeping cherry trees
Clouds of pretty flowers appear on weeping cherries early in the season.

Characterized by its distinctly weeping habit and early spring flowers, Prunus pendula has also been known to cause confusion among experts, who sometimes characterize it as a variety of Prunus subhirtella. What matters most is not the name but the habit, which is graceful and cascading or weeping. Clusters of white or pink flowers appear on trees in early spring. Available weeping varieties include ‘Pendula Rosea’, with pink blooms, ‘Pendula Rubra’, sporting darker rose flowers, and Extraordinaire™, with double pale-pink blossoms and fall leaves of burgundy.

Compact Japanese Flowering Cherries

The tiny Fuji cherry Zuzu® (Image thanks to Proven Winners)
The tiny Fuji cherry Zuzu® is a good selection for small gardens. (Image thanks to Proven Winners)

Choose the right varieties, and you can have all the beauty and drama of traditional Japanese cherry trees in a compact form. The hybrid ‘Snow Fountains’ is a weeping, white-flowered type that grows only 8 to 15 feet tall. Reaching only 7 to 8 feet tall and wide, ‘Kojo-No-Mai’, a variety of Fuji cherry (Prunus incisa, Zones 5-9), is perfect for containers. The pale pink, bell-like flowers are a little different in shape than those of other flowering cherries but equally beautiful. Elongated leaves are green during the growing season but turn flame red in the fall.  Another exceptional tiny Fuji cherry is Proven Winner’s Zuzu®, which reaches just 5 feet and has fully double pink flowers. To maintain a tree shape, trim off any shoots or branches that appear below the crown.

Elegant, Evergreen Magnolias

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Southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) is graced with outstanding evergreen foliage and glorious bowl-shaped spring flowers. (image by Pam Beck)

Gardening in eastern North America has many challenges.  But it also has many glories. Among the latter are the two evergreen magnolia species that call the region home.  Southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) and evergreen forms of sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana var. australis) have it all: handsome gray bark; large, sweet-scented, creamy-white flowers in late spring (and sporadically until fall); and evergreen leaves that take center stage in winter.

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Southern magnolias add evergreen beauty to dull winter landscapes. (Photo by Jessie Keith)

These native beauties are also more cold-tolerant than most gardeners know.  Although they hail from the Southeast United States, they succeed in cultivation into USDA Zone 5b.  Centerpieces of many a Mid-Atlantic and Southeast garden, they’re also capable of making a statement in parts of New England, New York,  and the Midwest.

Southern magnolia is one of those big, bold, primordial plants that looks like it just dropped in from the Cretaceous.  Indeed, its ancestors dominated much of Earth’s vegetation some 70- to 90-million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the planet.  But this magnificent magnolia also works just fine as a visually dominant specimen tree for twenty-first-century landscapes.

In its boldest forms, Magnolia grandiflora takes the primordial look to awe-inspiring lengths (and breadths).  The aptly named ‘Goliath’ (and the somewhat similar ‘Gloriosa’) produces enormous cupped flowers of ivory that open to a foot or more across, displayed against large, polished, relatively broad leaves.  The flowers of ‘Samuel Sommer’ are even larger (to 14 inches across), and its leaves have striking rust-brown felting on their undersides.  Selected for its abundance of bloom, ‘Majestic Beauty’ also features immense deep green leaves and a symmetrical, broadly conical growth habit.  Cultivars ‘Angustifolia’ and ‘Lanceolata’ have narrower leaves, felted brown underneath.

Magnolia grandiflora 'Edith Bogue'
The more delicate ‘Edith Bogue’ is best espaliered against a sturdy, protective wall.

Although typically forming a slow-growing, 40- to 60-foot tree, Southern magnolia sometimes assumes more compact forms, as in the narrowly conical, 30-foot-tall ‘Little Gem’.  Its 4-inch-wide flowers are relatively precocious (most Southern magnolias varieties take several years to a decade to come to bloom), and as with most varieties, they recur sparingly after the main flush in late spring.

Two other compact Magnolia grandiflora cultivars are of particular interest to Northern gardeners.  Both ‘Bracken’s Brown Beauty’ and ‘Edith Bogue’ have a good chance of succeeding into USDA Zone 5b in sites protected from winter sun and harsh northwest winds.  For sheer hardiness and sturdiness, ‘Bracken’s Brown Beauty’ can’t be beat, although even this toughest of Southern magnolias will go brownish-tan in cold, Zone-6 winters.  The slightly more delicate ‘Edith Bogue’ is notorious for losing limbs to heavy winter snow, and functions best in North gardens as an espalier, with her branches fixed to a stout frame (a shaded east-facing wall is ideal).

Whatever the climatic zone, Southern magnolia does best in relatively fertile soil that’s not too sandy or heavy.  A good compost (such as Fafard Premium Natural & Organic Compost) can help bring marginal soils into line.

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The highly fragrant blooms of sweetbay appear in spring and are almost primrose yellow. (Image by Jessie Keith)

Native from Texas to North-Coastal Massachusetts, Magnolia virginiana makes a natural choice for gardens from USDA Zones 5 to 9.  Evergreen forms of this elegant small tree – known botanically as variety australis – are confined to the Southeast, and tend to either expire or defoliate in Zone 5 and 6 winters.  Exceptions do occur, however, including the cultivars ‘Henry Hicks’ and ‘Moonglow’, both of which are hardy and often evergreen (or semi-evergreen) into Zone 5b.

In all its forms, sweetbay magnolia is one of the finest small trees for American gardens.  Typically single-trunked in warmer climes and multi-stemmed in chillier regions, it bears oval, rich green leaves with silvery undersides that shimmer in the breeze.  The cupped, creamy (almost primrose yellow) flowers debut in late spring and continue sporadically throughout summer, casting a piquant, questing fragrance reminiscent of roses or lemons.  Attractive clusters of red-fleshed fruits follow the blooms.  Often found in wetlands in nature, Magnolia virginiana is well suited for moister areas of the landscape (and loathes dry, sandy soil).

Natural and Organic
Before planting evergreen magnolias, fortify your soil with Fafard Natural & Organic Compost Blend.

Also well worth growing is the hybrid between sweetbay magnolia and umbrella magnolia (Magnolia tripetala), which combines the fragrant, summer-long blooms of the former with the bold, primordial, deciduous foliage of the latter.  Its cultivar ‘Cairn Croft’ is sometimes available from specialty nurseries.  Crosses between sweetbay and Southern magnolia have been developed and introduced by hybridizers, but offer no notable advantages over the parents.  For year-round leafage and beauty, these two exceptional natives can’t be beat.