The importance of small trees in gardens of any size simply can’t be measured.
Large trees are magnificent monuments in the landscape, but small trees can be equally significant landmarks in your own backyard. Big trees take your eyes to the sky; small trees shade a space, such as a patio, without dominating it. They define the flow of the eye and the feet through a garden, and punctuate the views. Small trees have a way of keeping the experience of a garden intimate and inviting.
“Most people want to look at things that are in scale with them, at their eye level, and if you choose the right small tree with the right form, you can create a great sense of place,” says Brian Kissinger, a garden designer and the director of horticulture at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.
“I use small trees for visual layering,” he says. “They help you build up a backdrop, create niches in the garden; they have lots of impact.”
In gardens in the desert Southwest, Kissinger plants little-leaf palo verde trees, which grow to only about 20 feet tall. They thrive in heat, tolerate drought, and bloom in spring, when they’re covered with bright yellow flowers. He likes to contrast the graceful habit of palo verde with sculptural cacti. Kissinger, who grew up in the Midwest, used to plant sweetbay magnolia trees, crabapples, redbuds, and other small specimens in the richly textured gardens he designed in the Kansas City area.
Small trees have lots of advantages. They fit neatly under the canopy of large trees in expansive gardens, and they’re not likely to outgrow their spaces. Many small trees also bloom profusely, putting on a brilliant, outsize display: Crabapples, dogwoods, and redbuds steal the show in spring gardens before the large trees even leaf out. These little trees are also prized for their handsome structure: They’re not just lollipops with green tops, but have characteristic shapes that add to the drama of a garden.
Trees sold at garden shops are all relatively small, but look closely at plant tags and you’ll discover that the mature height of oaks, maples, birches, willows, and other trees can be 50 feet or more. They’re fine if you have plenty of room (and no overhead power lines), although even a large garden can really only accommodate one or two big oaks. Small trees, which generally grow to about 20 feet (and no more than 30), suit the scale of small gardens much better. When you stick with smaller specimens, you can also plant more of them.
No one tree is right for every garden. “Most people like trees, but you have to choose them carefully,” says Ivan Katzer, an arborist in the Kansas City area. “A great tree is one that is appropriate for the site – for the exposure and conditions,” he says.
Katzer strongly recommends small trees, and he includes large shrubs in the same category. Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas), which grows slowly to 15 to 20 feet tall, is a showy, very small, early-blooming tree on his list of favorites. He also recommends serviceberry (Amelanchier) for its sparkling bloom and blazing fall color. You may have to do some research and then shop around to find the right small tree (or large shrub) for your space, Katzer says, but you’ll be glad you did.
Bill Thomas, director of the gracious Chanticleer Gardens in Wayne, especially likes sweetbay magnolia trees for their small size and their fragrant, creamy-white flowers. ‘Henry Hicks,’ a hardy evergreen cultivar grown at Chanticleer, can be planted quite close to a house, Thomas says.
“It’s very accommodating,” he says. “The flowers are small, but it blooms over a long period of time, so you can really enjoy the fragrance.”
Thomas also likes whitebud, the white variety of our native redbud tree, for its delicate flowers and interesting structure. The flowers are “a crisp, clean white” in spring, he says; they look especially striking against a brick house. The heart-shaped leaves cast a pretty shade in summer months, and a redbud’s dark silhouette is beautiful against snow in winter. Although redbuds grow to about 25 feet tall, you can keep them much smaller by pruning them every year or two, or even by cutting them to the ground from time to time.
“It will come right back,” Thomas says, sending up lots of shoots that can be thinned to just a few of the strongest.
Chaste tree (Vitex) gets the same treatment at Chanticleer. “I think it’s best if you whack it back every year,” he says. The vigorous new growth reaches 10 or 15 feet by mid- to late summer, with silvery-blue flowers at the tips of the branches. By Marty Ross, Philadelphia Daily News
