Garden Tips & Resources

Archive for the ‘Flowering Trees’ Category

One of the greatest joys of gardening is the pleasure you get when birds, butterflies, and other wildlife start visiting your yard. Birds and butterflies are particularly enjoyable, because they’re beautiful to watch while they’re going about their business.

If you like the idea of attracting birds to your garden, it’s easy enough to do. Just plant some trees, bushes, shrubs, and flowers which are naturally attractive to them!

Trees which produce some type of berry – even berries which are not edible by humans – are almost always guaranteed to bring birds to your yard and garden. The birds will particularly be attracted during the winter time months, because finding food that time of year is more difficult. And once you’ve started attracting birds to your garden, they’re more likely to keep coming back each year.

A crabapple tree is an excellent example of a fruit bearing tree which attracts birds. The Sugar Tyme Crabapple species will actually help to attract up to thirty different species of birds to your yard because it bears fruit throughout the fall and winter.

Dogwood trees are another wonderful choice for attracting birds. The Cornelian-cherry Dogwood produces deep red berries in late July or August, which the birds feed on through the winter.

If you don’t have room for trees in the yard though, try some bushes and flowers instead. The American Cranberrybush for example, grows red berries through the winter, which can attract up to thirty-five different types of birds. Spicebush, St. John’s Wort, Bayberry, and Sumac are examples of other bushes and shrubs which attract a wide variety of birds to the garden too.

Keep in mind that any type of tree, shrub, vine, or plant which produces fruit will attract many birds to your garden. So if you’re trying to grow fruit for yourself or your family such as grapes, strawberries, or blackberries, you might actually find yourself having to fight the birds for the fruit.

If flowers are your preference, then anything which produces nectar of some kind will help attract birds to your garden. Flowers which have a tubular shape to them are especially attractive to hummingbirds, as is the color yellow in large masses.

Honeysuckle vines are particularly attractive to both hummingbirds and bluebirds, and Roses, Sunflowers, or Butterfly weed will attract both birds and butterflies to your garden too.

Having a beautiful flowering garden doesn’t have to be limited to just having flowering plants growing low to the ground. In fact, you can have a wonderful garden filled with colors and scents, yet not have any ground based standard garden areas in your landscape at all. How? By planting flowering trees.

Flowering trees are the best of many worlds. They grow tall to provide shade in the heat of summer. They provide beautiful colors in their leaves and foilage. Some of them even provide additional colors and textures in their bark too. And they produce flowers in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. Many flowering trees also produce wonderful scents around your home and yard too.

Like almost any type of garden plant, there are hundreds of different types of flowering trees you can choose from. And like other plants, each tree has it’s own particular location and growth requirements as well. Basic tree planting rules of thumb apply of course: Be careful not to plant a flowering tree under a power or other dangerous utility line; Be sure your tree isn’t planted so close to your home that it can cause structual damage as it matures; And be sure that the location you choose for your tree is one you can live with for a lifetime.

Flowering Dogwood trees are a wonderful sight to see, and they can be planted in both tree or smaller shrub form too. Cheroke Chief is one particularly beautiful variety which produces amazing red flowers in the spring, and vibrant bronze foilage in autumn. The Japanese dogwood tree is another beautiful variety. This one produces white flowers and red berries which are excellent bird food. The foilage on this one is a deep red or purple color in autumn.

Magnolias are another popular flowering tree, and the saucer Magnolias produce giant flower blooms up to ten inches wide. The blooms often open before the leaves even start to bud on these trees, and they tend to be a whitish pink color which are quite fragrant. Saucer magnolia trees tend to grow at least twenty feet high and wide, so they’re excellent for creating garden shade as well as protecting your home from the worst of the summer sun’s heat too. So they do grow so large though, you’ll want to make sure they have plenty of room in the location you choos to plant them.