Paper bark maple

Jacquemonti birch

Does your winter landscape look a bit shabby? This coming spring take some action by planting trees that should perk up its appearance. New tree choices should ratchet up seasonal interest, attract more bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds in the spring-summer and hungry fruit feeding birds in fall-winter.

Making smart tree choices can add four-seasons of interest to your yard. In making your shopping choices, look for such arbor features as branch architecture, bark color(s), foliage texture, flowering, and resulting seeds and fruits.

Some of my favorites of trees with winter season appeal are:

Dogwoods: flowering dogwood (Cornus florida), Chinese dogwood (C. kousa) and Japanese cornel (C. officinalis). All three offer winter or spring flowering, unique horizontal branching, fruiting, and autumn leaf color. Latter two species show off exfoliating bark in winter.

Japanese maple (Acer palmatum): including coral bark variety ‘Sango Kaku’ and yellow bark of ‘Bihou’.

Paper bark maple (Acer griseum): stunning cherry red exfoliating bark.

Trifoliate maple (Acer truncatum): nice exfoliating tan colored bark.

Birches: River birch (Betula nigra Heritage® or Dura Heat ®), Himalayan birch (B. jacquemontii), and paper birch (B. papyrifera) – all with brightly colored exfoliating bark (latter two birch species for northern areas within USDA hardiness zones 2-6).

Crabapple (Malus spp.): this spring blooming tree (hundreds of varieties), many bearing colorful fruits that invite birds to your property.

Ornamental Flowering Cherry (Prunus spp.): some varieties exhibit stunning ruby red bark color.

Hollies (Ilex spp.): female forms produce full crops of with bright red fruits. Yellow berried forms are also available.

Green Hawthorn (Crataegus viridis ‘Winter King’): bright red fruits cover branches during the winter.

Japanese Stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamellia): patchy exfoliating creamy colored inner bark.

Persian Ironwood (Parrotia persica): patchy exfoliating bark exposing a light colored inner wood.

Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba): this ancient deciduous large landscape tree with brightly colored triangular fall foliage and grayish-brown furrowed bark.

Crape myrtles (Lagerstroemia spp.): choice of many cultivars; strong muscular bark that exfoliates to reveal colorful inner wood.