Featured Expert
Peter Moe
Director of Operations
Minnesota Landscape Arboretum
Chanhassen, MN

Q: I want to plant some small ornamental trees to improve my landscape. What cultivars of small trees would be available?

A: The first thing that people think about are flowering crabapples. There are very many that you can select for your yard. I encourage people to think about the twelve month effect of those plants in their yard, and to pick one that has beautiful flowers, which they all do. But, you should also look for disease resistance, so they have nice green foliage during the summer. The ones that have persistent fruit both create a nice landscape effect in the fall and winter, as well as providing food for birds. Behind me is a 'Ringo' crab, which is actually an older variety, and is a large fruit that can be used for jelly. Some of the newer ones that are available are probably better landscape plants, and these include 'Harvest Gold', which has beautiful white flowers in the spring. It's sort of an upright vase shaped tree, and has very nice yellow fruit in the fall that turn to a kind of orange after they're frozen. It makes a really beautiful effect against the snow. A 'Pink Spires' is a another new flowering crab apple that has more of an upright form that's good for a small space that is very disease resistant and has nice pink flowers in the spring. There's a number of others that have come out of the nursery industry in the last ten years or so, and it's a good idea to do some research and look at the form of the tree and its disease resistance, and also just pick a flowering crab that you like. There are some other small trees that also do very well, especially in western Minnesota - one is Amur maple. We've got a lot of Amur maple planted here at the arboretum, but there are some new ones that have come out that have been selected because they have additional seasonal interest. One of those is 'Embers', and that has been selected for having very nice red seeds in the mid-summer. The parachute-like seeds of the samaras on maples are bright red, and the 'Embers' also has beautiful red fall colors. All Amur maples have good fall colors, but 'Embers' is fantastic. It's a nice small tree that will grow in very tough sites, and it's quite fast growing in a good site. There's some other small trees you could consider too, some of the Prunus, and the red flowering chokecherries are a nice tree for a lot of areas. Some of the small willows can also make nice small trees.

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Last updated: Tuesday, February 01, 2005