While we’d all like to have rolling parkland emanating from our luxurious country estate, most of us have to make do with bijou gardens. If you’re happy to settle for smaller trees and will be dedicated to using companies like B&T’s Tree Service to manage your trees, you can still have trees, even in a small garden. But which are the best varieties? Let’s take a look.
Ornamental Pear Trees
Ornament pear trees are ideal for gardens for two reasons. The first is that they provide you with an annual windfall of delicious fruit. So long as your pear tree is healthy, you can enjoy a seasonal avalanche of pears you can use in everything from stews to pies.
Ornamental pear trees give you spring blossom too as the cold weather recedes. It’s not quite cherry-blossom levels of beauty, but it’s close.
Silver Birch
Silver birch trees are a popular choice for small gardens. The beautiful thing about silver birch is that they give your garden height but tend not to spread out a considerable amount. They occupy a relatively small footprint and don’t suffer from bough-fall issues, like many other larger species. Silver birch remains flexible and safe throughout their lifecycle.
Even though they’re deciduous, silver birch is probably at its best in the winter. It silvery bark complements the cold, icy weather perfectly.
Finally, if you’re a mushroom fan, you’ll love silver birch. When the trees become mature, they provide an ideal environment for mycelium – the subsoil structure that produces mushrooms. Many silver birch trees end up with a ring of mushrooms around their base in the later summer and early fall.
Pin Oak
Oak is a majestic species of tree – the “king of trees” if you will. But if you’ve got a small garden, they’re just not practical. Oak trunks can grow to become truly enormous, and their long lives mean that they continue to grow for hundreds of years (not that you’ll be around to see it). What’s more, as Rockoff Tree Solutions points out, oak trees are at risk of disease, making them more challenging to manage.
Pin Oak, however, tend to be smaller and more manageable. When these trees mature, they look like deciduous Christmas trees, with their long stems and triangular-shaped foliage. While they can still end up being large, they maintain a strong central trunk and don’t tend to form many large off-shoots like traditional oak species. This feature helps to make them more manageable.
Magnolia
Magnolia is a fabulous tree, especially in the springtime. Magnolia trees produce a beautiful display of pink or white flowers which carpets the entire plant.
Some magnolia species are large, but there are a variety of species, like Caerhays Suprise, that are slow-growing and work perfectly in small gardens.
Cherry Trees
While cherry trees are native to Japan, they’re able to flourish in most temperature climates. Cherry blossom trees offer two distinct advantages. First, they’re relatively compact and stay low to the ground, making maintenance straightforward. Second, they produce possibly the most exquisite blossom of any common garden tree. Less known is that cherry trees also produce beautiful orange-red foliage in the winter.
Conclusion
Take your time and select your trees with your garden size in mind. Do your research. Your garden with thrive and provide you will years of enjoyment.
