There are plants you grow for colour. There are plants you grow for structure. And then there are plants you grow for something far less tangible — a fragrance so extraordinary that it stops you mid-step the moment you enter a garden. Fragrant olive (Osmanthus fragrans) belongs entirely to that last category. The blooms are…
There is a moment every spring, usually in late March or early April, when the forest edges of the eastern United States seem to light up from within. Before most trees have leafed out, flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) opens its blossoms — white or pink, wide and elegant — against the still-bare woods behind it….
Walk through almost any neighbourhood in the eastern United States in early spring, and you will notice something before the grass greens or the first tulip opens. Small, vivid red clusters — flowers, not leaves — appear on bare branches while winter still lingers. That is Acer rubrum, the red maple, announcing itself months before…
Some trees are useful. Some are beautiful. And some — rare as they are — manage to be both, profoundly and simultaneously. Sugar maple (Acer saccharum) belongs to that rare category. It clothes entire hillsides in gold and crimson each autumn. This tree yields the sap that becomes genuine maple syrup. It provides one of…
Some trees earn their place in the garden through sheer spectacle. Others earn it through quiet, consistent beauty — season after season, year after year. Sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) belongs to the second group. It does not overwhelm. It enchants. With creamy white flowers that fill the air with a vanillalike sweetness, silvery-green leaves that…
There are trees you admire, and then there are trees that stop you in your tracks. Magnolia grandiflora — the Southern magnolia — belongs firmly in the second category. Its enormous white blossoms, glossy evergreen leaves, and commanding stature have made it one of the most celebrated trees in American horticulture. It is the official…
The Okame Cherry is a hybrid ornamental flowering tree, created by crossing two species: Prunus incisa (the Fuji Cherry, native to Japan) and Prunus campanulata (the Taiwan Cherry or Bell-Flowered Cherry, native to Taiwan and southern Japan). The hybrid was developed in England in the 1940s by the legendary cherry breeder Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram —…
Some ornamental trees are chosen for softness and romance. Others are chosen for architecture. The Umineko Cherry belongs firmly to the second category. It grows tall and strongly upright — a clean, columnar to narrowly oval form that rises with a confidence rarely seen among ornamental cherries. In mid-spring, pure white single flowers open along…
Before the centuries of ornamental cherry breeding, before the named cultivars and the grafted specimens and the park avenues of Kanzan and Yoshino — there was the Wild Cherry. Prunus avium has grown across Europe, western Asia, and North Africa for thousands of years. It predates horticulture. It fed birds and mammals long before it…
Some trees bloom loudly. The Shogetsu Cherry blooms with grace. Where ‘Kanzan’ overwhelms with sheer density of colour and ‘Shirotae’ impresses with horizontal architecture, ‘Shogetsu’ does something more nuanced — it hangs its large, blush-white double flowers in long, pendulous clusters from gently arching branches, creating a display that feels less like a spectacle and…