Choosing a tree for your garden

Whilst your bedding schemes can be new each year and you can move herbaceous plants every few years the choice of a tree is not something to be rushed. Remember if you choose well it may outlive you by several centuries!

Height and spread:

Consider the ultimate size of your proposed tree. This is sadly not the height given on many plant labels as these often give the size at 10 years or so.

Trees usually take a few years sending out roots and then grow fairly steadily for 30-200 years. Cherries stop soon but Witch hazels, Oaks, Acers and many others will keep enlarging for 50+ years.

The triple whammy

Flowers, fruit and foiliage to maximise effect

Trees which have multiple seasons of interest will give so much more variety than a more static tree.

I call these the double and triple whammies. All fruit trees do this to some extent with the lovely white cherry blossoms or apple blossoms being followed by deep red cherries (and birds) or deep red apples or several other shades of crab apples.

Canopy

What shape and how solid

There is a wide range of tree shapes from the classical lollipop to tall spires, broad spreading trees and weeping species. Some trees have such dense foliage that few things will grow beneath during the summer, Horse Chestnuts (Aesculus) and Sycamores (Acer pseudoplatanus) are good examples. Others have much thinner foliage and cast a dappled shade that is pleasant to sit beneath and where you can still plant. Birches (Betula) and some of the other Acers fit this bill.

Screening

A common request to us it to have a 20 ft evergreen to hide a neighbours house/window etc. Trying to hide a large building is difficult however and a row of evergreen leylandii isn't the answer.

Three options exist:

1. An open canopied tree such as a Birch will grow rapidly to 30ft, give winter interest from the bark and yet not cast too much shade.

2. A solid barrier either evergreen or deciduous can be grown leaving the trunks bare, a bit like a hedge on stilts(Pleaching) which avoids the mass of foliage at ground level.

3. Distraction is perhaps the best technique. Rather than highlighting the distant object by planting a tall tree effectively pointing at the object you provide another focal point within the garden which need not be a tree at all.