At the same time that spring-flowering trees are adding spectacular beauty to a garden picture, their tree foams accent the mass-like shape of bushes in the shrubbery border, planted near the house or in the garden.
Their different forms tend to pull a design together rather than crowd it, as often happens when too many flowering shrubs in a relatively small space.
The white and pink dogwood, Cornus florida, and Cornus florida rubra are outstanding early flowering trees useful in designs because the often odd and unusual growing shapes can fill many locations where other trees would be useless.
The square flower buds and grayish bark add their distinction to the planting during the winter months, followed in the spring by the square blooms that are so well known. These dogwoods produce leaves by the time the flowers fade.
Japanese Dogwood Is More Upright When Young
Cornus kousa, the Japanese dogwood, is more upright in form when young than the American species, but the top broadens as the tree grows older.
Cornus kousa has more pointed leaves which open before the flowers, which also differ from Cornus florida in that they are pointed rather than squarely notched. Both species have bright red berries, which attract birds.
The brilliant color of the autumn foliage is unsurpassed. The weeping forms of these species can be used more advantageously than the upright types beside pools, on slopes, or terraces.
While Cornus mas, the Cornelian cherry, is usually grown as a shrub, it can be trained to a single stem. The frothy pale yellow flowers bloom before forsythia, and the large red fruits that ripen in August give the shrub its name.
White Blooms On Washington Thorn
The thorn trees such as Crataegus cordata (the Washington thorn), Crataegus mollis or coccinea, and Crataegus crus-galli (the cockspur thorn) have white flowers.
In contrast, the English hawthorn, Crataegus oxyacantha, has rose flowers, and the variety Paulii or ‘Paul’s Scarlet’ has bright scarlet flowers. These hawthorns have beautiful foliage, red or scarlet fruit, and a slow-growing shape which that does not grow out of size in a design.
The Washington thorn has perhaps the most beautiful scarlet autumn foliage coloring with the added advantage of long remaining clusters of scarlet fruit.
Best Known Flowering Crabs
The spring landscape is not complete without the flowering crab apples and cherries.
The Bechtel’s, Dolgo, and Hopa crabs are perhaps the most advertised and therefore best known of the flowering crabs, but many others in this large family are equally as attractive.
Because of the numerous varieties and species, the flowering cherries or Prunus are best seen in flowers at nurseries or arboretums. Seeing produces a better description than words.
The cherries offer a more excellent range in shape and form from a columnar, vase, and cylindrical to weeping than do the crabs. Usually, the pink blossomed ones predominate, but white-flowered types are available.
One of the cherries, Prunus tomentosa (the Nanking cherry), has pinky-white blossoms in the spring followed by light red fruits, which yield a juicy extract when squeezed before they are solidly ripe that makes a delicious base for a fruit punch.