Quick facts
- Choose on eventual height and spread, never on the size in the pot.
- Rule of thumb: keep the trunk at least its eventual height from a building on shrinkable clay, and never less than two thirds of it on other soils.
- Multi-season value is the test — blossom, leaf, fruit, autumn colour, bark. Two out of five is a good tree; three is very good.
- Autumn to late winter is the planting window. Bare-root and root-balled stock establishes faster than containerised.
- Multi-stem and pleached forms give height without a wide crown at ground level.
Why one tree beats fifty perennials
A garden without a tree is a garden without a ceiling. Everything happens at knee height and the eye has nowhere to go but the neighbouring roofline. Put in one tree of any size and the space changes: dappled light instead of flat, movement instead of stillness, birds instead of none, and privacy a fence cannot give because it works at first-floor level.
The mistake we see every week is a garden with three small trees where one proper tree belonged. Three underwhelm each other and compete for the same root run. One does the job.
How to choose: five questions
- What size will it actually be? Not the label size, not the pot size — the size in twenty years. A small garden tree here means a mature height of roughly 4 to 8 metres. Anything sold as "small" that reaches 12 metres is a large tree growing slowly.
- How dense is the canopy, and where does the shade fall? Open canopies — birch, Amelanchier, Sorbus — let you keep planting underneath. Dense ones cast a hard shadow and dry the ground beneath. Our sun is low, so a tree on the southern boundary throws shade a long way across a small garden in spring and autumn. Walk the plot at 10am and 4pm before deciding.
- How does it behave near buildings and drains? Tree roots do not break sound drains; they exploit joints that have already failed. The real risks are the thirsty, wide-rooting species — willow, poplar, the bigger limes — and none belong in a small garden. For the trees below, two thirds of the eventual height as a distance from a wall is a sound minimum on most soils, and the full height on shrinkable clay.
- What does it give across the year? Two weeks of blossom is not enough on its own.
- What does it need? Wind and waterlogging kill far more young trees here than cold.
Trees worth the space
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Amelanchier lamarckii (snowy mespilus) — the one we plant most. April blossom, coppery new leaves, berries the birds take, orange-red autumn colour. Around 6 to 8 metres in twenty years and more in time on good ground, light canopy, easy on most soils.
- Malus 'Evereste' and 'Red Sentinel' (crab apples) — blossom, pollination for neighbouring apples, fruit hanging into winter. 5 to 7 metres, tolerant of clay and wind. The most useful group we have.
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Sorbus vilmorinii and Sorbus hupehensis — the refined rowans. Fine pinnate foliage, pink or white berries, good autumn colour, 4 to 6 metres.
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Betula utilis var. jacquemontii (Himalayan birch) — white bark that reads across a garden in winter, airy canopy, easy to underplant. Not for badly drained ground.
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Acer griseum (paperbark maple) — peeling cinnamon bark, scarlet autumn colour. Slow and well-behaved — around 6 metres in twenty years, eventually 8 metres or more. Wants shelter and drainage.
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Prunus serrula — grown for its polished mahogany bark; the flowers are small. It reaches 8 metres or more with a broad head, so give it the room, and site it where you can touch the trunk in passing.
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Cercis siliquastrum (Judas tree) — magenta flowers straight out of bare wood, heart-shaped leaves after. Needs the warmest, most sheltered spot you have and free drainage.
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Crataegus persimilis 'Prunifolia' — glossy leaves, white flowers, red haws, fiery autumn colour, and it takes wind, clay and salt-laden air that finishes most ornamental trees.
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Magnolia stellata — a large shrub or small multi-stem tree at 3 to 4 metres, which is why it suits tight gardens. Starry white flowers before the leaves.
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Cornus kousa — creamy bracts in June when little else flowers, then fruit and autumn colour. Needs moisture-retentive, neutral to acid soil and shelter.
Shapes for tight spaces
The form you buy matters as much as the species.
- Multi-stem — several trunks from ground level. The canopy sits higher and lighter, the trunks become the feature, the footprint stays narrow. Amelanchier, birch, Cornus and Magnolia are excellent this way.
- Standard or half-standard — a single clear stem to roughly 1.8 or 1.2 metres. Lets you plant up to the trunk and walk beneath the crown.
- Pleached — a clear stem with a flat trained panel above: a hedge on stilts. The answer to being overlooked from an upstairs window when there is no room for a tree. Hornbeam and lime are usual.
Plant in autumn or winter into ground loosened well beyond the root ball but not heavily enriched, stake low so the trunk can flex, keep a bare mulched circle a metre wide for three years, and water through the first two summers. Our team can root-ball larger specimens through the dormant season.
Common mistakes
- Buying the biggest tree in the yard. Small trees establish faster and overtake large ones within five years.
- Planting too deep. The root flare must sit at soil level; burying it is the commonest cause of slow decline.
- Planting three small trees instead of one good one.
- Ignoring the shade cast in October, when the sun is low and the shadow far longer than in June.
- Leaving stakes and ties on for years, so the tie cuts in and the trunk never develops strength.
- Strimmer damage at the base, which kills more young trees here than any pest.
