Why I Oughta...

At the Morton Arboretum Fall Plant Sale, they had a series of trees for sale including some shade and fruit trees as well as large trees and 'understory trees'.  You know that I can't go to a nursery with a tree sale and not come home with a tree for our yard.  I couldn't decide what tree to buy (I was considering an Ironwood tree), but I asked the staff at the Arboretum which tree they liked the best and BOTH of the arborists that I asked pointed me toward a set of trees that had the fewest there.  There were just three of these Red Fox Katsura trees, but both arborists told me that this was the tree that they'd bring home.  You can see the price above ($24), so it isn't a budget buster. The description from the sign reads:   A purple-leaved selection of the Katsura tree, this specimen has a narrow upright, columnar growth habit and is relatively low maintenance.   Columnar?  Check.  Red?  Check.  And, turns out...it is Japanese.  So, check.   Below is the tag

Back in the Spring, I bought this tiny Horstmann's Recursive Contorted Larch Tree from an online nursery and planted it in the front/sideyard.  I watered it in and have been trying to baby it during the heat.  Today, posting this in the [garden diary] so I know what it looks like in the Summer of season one.  It has added some length to the tree, but due to it's weeping habit, it is hard to tell how much.  I'll add some measurements to this as I do a season-ending caliper reading later this Summer/early Fall. I also didn't get around to adding this tree to the 'inventory', so I'm correcting that now. This is tree #51 that I've planted and BY FAR the smallest one. The previous one was last week when we planted the other contorted tree -the Harry Lauder's Walking Stick  - which I mentioned was the "last tree" we had this year, but I stand corrected. 51 trees across four planting seasons. (For now...) 45 of those trees still ali

Back in February, I posted about a tree that I came across that had a lot of the features that I desired in a tree: the Diana Weeping Japanese Larch .  It is a narrow tree (columnar), is contorted, has a weeping habit and is a deciduous conifer.  I have yet to see a  Diana Weeping Larch, but I did come across a similar tree from an online nursery named Kigi Nursery called: The Horstmann's Recurved Contorted Larch Tree . I read the description and thought this was a good fit for our yard: LARIX DECIDUA 'HORSTMANN'S RECURVED' CONTORTED LARCH IS AN UPRIGHT DECIDUOUS CONIFER WITH TWISTING, TURNING BRANCHLETS. NEEDLES ARE GREEN IN SUMMER AND GOLDEN IN AUTUMN BEFORE FALLING. PREFERS ORGANIC RICH WELL DRAINED SOIL. Sounds perfect, right?  I went on the site and they were offering only a 0-1 year old tree for $40 .  I don't know what I thought it was going to look like when it arrived, but when I opened the package, I felt surprised.  Here's a look at the tree

Over the past few years, I've posted a few times about Japanese-inspired gardening and how I'm increasingly drawn to it for various reasons.  I spent a bit of time walking around Gotenyama Gardens in Tokyo and as I walked down the steps into the kind-of sunken garden, I was surrounded by a lush garden in the middle of a metropolitan city.   And that fascination with Japanese gardens has manifested itself in a couple of things, but mostly columnar trees .  But, there are other elements that I've talked about including ferns and this Japanese Forest Grass , too.  One of the types of tree that I don't seem to have covered at all here on the blog is a Japanese Maple tree.  I've seen them at the garden center over the past few years and they're always tempting (and pricey), but I didn't know too much about them to ever make a decision on them.  This Winter, I started to poke around them as thinking about this part of our yard and wanted to get a little bit smar

Two days ago was the latest in the run of [ tree dreaming ] posts featuring this columnar Japanese Larch called "Paper Lanterns" that throws off these beautiful - and delicate - paper-y cones .  In that post, I mentioned that I while I haven't covered Larch trees before, in looking at columnar Larches, I came across a tree that checks a couple of really desirable boxes for my tastes in trees. Is there a tree that is: a deciduous conifer.   Puts on a 'Fall show'. Is Japanese-inspired. Grows in a narrow, columnar form. Displays a weeping branching structure. And...is considered contorted.   Turns out, there's a tree that checks all six of those boxes.  It is called the Diana Weeping Larch .  I found it when I was looking around at columnar larches and found this story on FineGardening about trees in tight spaces .  They showed this photo (below) of the Diana Weeping Japanese Larch.  This is a special tree, isn't it: This is not my photo.  Fo

More dreaming about trees going on here on the blog today.  Yesterday, I posted about the columnar American Sweetgum called Slender Silhouette .  The whole [tree dreaming] series can be found at the very bottom of this post.  If you're not interested in following along with me in documenting some of the trees that I've come across this Winter that are worth sharing, you can just move along here.  But, today I'm posting about something interesting:  a new (to me) deciduous conifer.  I have a few deciduous conifers on our property including a Dawn Redwood and Bald Cypress that are both small trees.  Turns out, the largest portion of deciduous conifers appear to be larch trees.  From this post on The Spruce : Most of the deciduous conifers belong to the genus Larix and are commonly known as larch trees . These trees have short needles in clusters that run along the branches, with flowers sprinkled throughout. The flowers transform into cones. Larch trees are appealing

A few days ago, I posted my latest [ tree dreaming ] post about the Van Den Aker Weeping Narrow/columnar Alaskan Cedar and in doing the poking around on the Web about that very tree, I came across a few other trees that are worth documenting here for future contemplation.  This post is about two trees:  The Oregon Green Austrian Pine and the "Joe Kozey" Narrow Japanese Umbrella Pine tree.  The Austrian Pine isn't (I think) necessarily a columnar tree, but it has narrow/columnar varieties.  But the Umbrella Pine certainly is columnar in habit. First the Oregon Green Austrian Pine.  It has these interesting 'candles' that emerge on the tips of the tree. Via Monrovia comes this photo: Photo above via Monrovia.  Source .   Kinda cool, isn't it? Monrovia describes the tree thusly : Via the Monrovia product listing .   Next on the list of tree specimens that are worth dreaming about is this 'Joe Kozey' Narrow Japanese Umbrella Pine.  Here&#

With the calendar turning over to the new year soon, my mind has naturally drifted outdoors to our backyard to think about what kind of 'tree planning' we should be doing in Spring.  Right after Christmas, I posted my front yard tree succession planting plan .  And because we've been filling our bird feeder, my mind has been focused on the area you see in the photo above.  I've covered this section of yard before with this Fall of 2017 post showing the landscape plan here . Of note, what I'm showing here differs from what the plan includes, but that's because the plan doesn't call for many new trees, but instead uses the existing trees and augments them with shrubs. To set the context - or edges - of this image, you can see two trees that I've posted about before. First, in purple, on the left is the Weeping White Spruce Columnar tree . And, in red, on the far right is the Weeping Cedar tree that I planted and lost .  I've left the corpse

My love of columnar trees and what are often called Fastigiata form in trees is well-established.  I've posted about them many times here and have posted photos of my travels to Tokyo where they, too, seem to have been drawn to the columnar form .  I've planted a few different columnar trees in our yard including a *somewhat* columnar shaped Chanticleer Pear tree in a few spots.  But, the list of columnar or narrow trees and shrubs is pretty deep here on the blog: I  made the largest tree investment in our yard in a series of eight Columnar European Hornbeams as a screen .   I planted a hedge of small Hicks Yews - which are upright in nature - in the far back of our lot. We have a columnar Weeping White Spruce conifer near our fenceline in the back. This past Summer, we added a Dwarf Alberta Spruce to the backyard .  I planted - and lost - a Weeping Cedar tree a few years back.  After looking around for some other Columnar trees, I came across - and shared - th

Just a little bit over a week ago, I shared ANOTHER 1 post about the trees that I saw in Tokyo and talked about how I'm in the middle of a bit of a crush on Japanese horticulture.  That crush certainly is most-focused on trees (both deciduous and coniferous) that are typically columnar in shape, but it also extends to gardens in general.  This post is about a little hidden garden called the Gotenyama Garden that is right outside the Tokyo Marriott in Shinagawa.  The same place that had that epic honeycomb setup I shared back in July . The Cherry Blossom tree that I included in a post with some Nagoya-area trees back in April of this year is from the very top of Gotenyama Garden, but that was as far as I was able to *get* to in the garden on my previous trip.  Just a quick step outside to grab a photo.  This time, I was able to wander in there a bit further.  And it is pretty great! Starting with the image you see at the top that shows one of the intermediate levels of a

Another day, another tree that we planted in the yard.  This one, while isn't technically in the "dwarf" category, is another purposely-small tree:  A Hakuro Nishiki Dappled Willow Tree.  Welp....this is actually - according to the tag - a "Deciduous Shrub", but in Tree Form.  So, I'm calling it a tree.  I'm pretty sure that this is a grafted tree, but I can't really tell where it was grafted.  I'll post some closer photos if I can find the graft spot/line in the tree.   But, since this is a tree, this is #35 in terms of planting since we bought the property in 2017.  This is a tree that we had (and I bought it on a whim) back at our old house in Elmhurst.  We planted it on the northside of our backwalk, adjacent to the garage.  It was a stunner.   I loved how it looked.  Nat loved it, too.  It shoots out these beautiful - and almost celebratory - willow limbs that are full of color. Pinks, greens, whites.      I don't have a post