Check out these choices to beautify your yard and increase property values.
10 Great Trees to Consider Planting in Your Yard This Spring
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Good Front Yard Trees: Boxelder
Forget what you’ve heard about boxelder trees (Acer negundo) being weed trees. ‘Kelly’s Gold’ is reason enough to grow this tough, undemanding maple.
It starts out with yellow spring foliage, maturing to chartreuse. It makes a fine focal point, lawn specimen or small shade tree. ‘Kelly’s Gold’ grows quickly after you plant the tree and reaches about 30 to 40 feet in height. It’s hardy in USDA Hardiness Zones 5 through 8.
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Best Trees for Backyard: Seven-Son Flower
If you haven’t heard of seven-son flower tree (Heptacodium miconioides) before, you’re not alone. But you’ll want to consider it for your yard.
It’s a true four-season star, with intriguing shape and peeling bark all year round. In late summer, when few other trees or shrubs are blooming, it puts out large white flower panicles. About a month later, the remaining flower sepals turn bright red.
Seven-son flower grows about 20 feet tall and 10 to 15 feet wide. It’s hardy in USDA Zones 5 through 8.
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Good Front Yard Trees: Paperbark Maple
There are so many great maples — sugars and reds and Japanese — that it can be hard to pick one. Paperbark maple (Acer griseum) makes that a little easier.
If its trademark copper-color peeling bark doesn’t bring enough joy all year round, it also has attractive foliage during the growing season and bright scarlet fall color. Paperbark maple grows slowly to 25 feet tall and 15 to 20 feet wide, with an open habit that improves with age. It’s well suited to smaller gardens and hardy in Zones 5 through 8.
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Best Trees for Backyard: Ginkgo
Grow a piece of history — ancient history! Ginkgo trees have been around for millions of years.
Once thought to be extinct, they were rediscovered in the 20th century. They’ve since become a valued landscape tree because of their beauty and ability to put up with tough, urban conditions.
Their fan-shape leaves really stand out in fall when they turn bright yellow. This multistem ginkgo can be found at Lied Lodge in Nebraska City, Nebraska, home of the Arbor Day Foundation.
Ginkgo drops its leaves all at once, so enjoy the fall foliage show while you can! Ginkgo grows slowly to 50 to 80 feet tall, although some cultivars are less than 15 feet in maturity. Be sure to plant a male specimen, since female ginkgos drop smelly fruit. Hardy in Zones 4 through 9.
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Flowering Crabapple
Flowering crabapple (Malus spp.) was once regarded as a one-trick pony: a week of bloom followed by green foliage and later messy fruit that didn’t even have the decency to offer much color.
But today’s outstanding cultivars brought a range of flower (white, red, pink) and fruit colors (yellow, orange, red and burgundy). This fine specimen can be found at the Iowa Arboretum in Madrid, Iowa.
Crabapple trees are available in a variety of shapes, including columnar and umbrella, and sizes (generally eight to 20 feet tall), so they’re multi-season stars. Flowering crabapple trees are hardy in Zones 4 through 8.
Looking for more? Here’s our round-up of different types of flowering trees.
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Red Oak
If you’ve got the space, why not plant America’s national tree? The oak is a symbol of strength and endurance with a mythological past.
There are hundreds of species to choose from. Landscapers seem to favor the red oak (Quercus rubra) for its quick growth, wide, rounded habit and fabulous fall color. It grows 60 to 75 feet tall and wide.
Learn how to keep shade trees thriving.
Photo courtesy of Luke Miller
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Quaking Aspen
Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) is also called trembling aspen because the leaves flutter in the slightest breeze. It’s a fast grower, typical of the the poplar family, that looks particularly pretty growing in clusters. It accepts a range of soils and rewards you with golden yellow foliage in fall and whitish bark year round.
Quaking aspen grows 40 to 50 feet tall, with an oval to pyramidal shape. It’s hardy in Zones 2 through 6. Prairie Gold (shown) is a more heat-tolerant aspen.
Check out other trees with great fall foliage.
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Best Trees for Backyard: Golden Pine
Evergreens are the type of tree known for adding color to the garden when you need it most — in the dead of winter.
Generally, any sign of green is welcome at that point. But golden pine (Pinus virginiana ‘Wate’s Golden’) ramps up the wintertime show with a different hue: the medium-green needles turn golden yellow. They return to green as the weather warms, but by then you’ve got other things to look at in the garden.
‘Wate’s Golden’ grows slowly to 15 to 20 feet tall, 10 to 15 feet wide, but can reach 40 feet tall. It’s hardy in Zones 4 through 9.
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Good Front Yard Trees: Sweet Gum
Sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) is easily identified by its star-shape leaves, which turn rich hues of red, yellow and orange in fall. It also has spiny, star-shape seedpods that drop in the winter.
Some consider the ornamental seedpods a nuisance. In that case, substitute a variety like ‘Rotundiloba,’ which has no fruit.
Sweet gum is hardy in Zones 5 through 9 and reaches 60 to 75 feet tall and 40 to 50 feet wide.
Ever wonder how to tell different tree species? Try this tree-identifying guide.
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Best Trees for Backyard: Eastern White Pine
Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) makes a welcome addition to any garden where space is available. Although the species can reach 50 to 80 feet tall and 20 to 40 feet wide, some upright and weeping cultivars that require much less space. With the species or a select cultivar, you’ll enjoy the fine, soft, blue-green needles.
Eastern white pine trees make a great screen. Or plant one as a specimen. It self-mulches with its own needles, so there’s never a weed problem beneath mature trees. It’s hardy in Zones 3 through 8.
