Hello, I was wondering if anyone might be able to provide some suggestions. I am trying to find a tree that only gets about 5 feet wide and will tolerate shade. The site is against a North facing building. Is there the perfect beech tree out there or a maple??? These trees will be replacement trees for ones that were removed in Vancouver so they need to have 6cm caliper. Thanks in advance, Laura Ralph www.aliveandwellorganic.ca
Vine maple might work for you. Available wild-collected in large sizes for comparatively low prices, often planted to make silhouettes against buildings. Grows much bigger than 5 ft. wide on good sites, without restraint. Not especially fast and amenable to adept pruning.
Thanks Ron, Yes, I had considered vine maple or acer sachharum 'Barrett Cole'. However, after proposing a maple to the client, it seems that they would rather have a more formal looking tree. Now I am leaning toward a columnar hornbeam - then if anyone ever wanted to control its width it could be sheared. LR
Carpinus betulus, including its columnar cultivars is a medium-growing tree. Shearing one to squeeze it into an undersized space would make it hedge-like and graceless. 'Fastigiata' is already kind of crisp- and twiggy looking on its own. It also sometimes gets sucking pests during our dry summers and becomes sooty. A brushy (sheared) hornbeam with sooty leaves is not something I would like near the house, myself. If the tree can spread out overhead snakebark maples could be tried. Bark interest at eye level, nice leaves and pendent fruits above - on trees liking cool positions.
Thread started with >Is there the perfect beech tree out there or a maple???< I'd wonder about beech in that exposure, but maybe it wouldn't matter. However, there is still the problem of huge eventual size - even the columnar ones are not dwarf. Slow (as they all are) but not dwarf. Trees such as Japanese stewartia, columnar beech and fastigiate hornbeam that are skinny at first but big and/or broad later, seen planted as foundation plants because of the size and shape they have at time of planting must surely be doomed to premature deaths by removal in most instances. (I do actually know of several decades-old Japanese stewartia in my area that happened to develop with very narrow lower crowns and been kept as foundation plants, so it is possible that one could actually work - if you found similar ones not inclined to branch out sideways significantly, at a low height. This is an important point as heading these back does not produce an attractive effect at all). Really 5 ft. = a shrub. That's why something like a small, Sec. Palmata (vine, Japanese etc.) maple might work - although some old specimens under different conditions are much too big (there are wild, shaded vine maples 60 ft. across in this region) these kinds are inherently shrubby, likely to be small-growing for a long time under ordinary conditions - and can be managed acceptably with skilled pruning. Speaking of Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) common cultivar 'Shishigashira' might be perfect, except for the part about starting with big specimens. Oregon growers or perhaps a Lower Mainland grower or two could perfectly well have big, boxed or still-in-the-ground specimens of this commonly offered selection but they will have some years behind them and be priced accordingly.
Hi, I have attached a picture of the building. It is a commercial building. The trees are going to be placed in between the windows but out from the building. I will take your advice into consideration;yet, since these are replacing trees that were removed with a permit, I have to follow certain guidelines. The windows don't let in much light and they are frosted, so if they are eventually obscured it might be okay.
Like most buildings what this really needs is some softening, natural-habit evergreen shrubbery that flows along the bottom, up between the windows at one or two points, and up at the corners, with one in-scale deciduous tree in an appropriate spot relative to the shape of the whole building (maybe the part that was in shadow at time of photo being taken). Exclamation points between the windows will not be an enhancement. Irish yews would make this particular building as it appears in this view look like a mausoleum - or worse.
2 trees were replaced. Therefore, 2 must be planted. The client wants a formal look and there is grass in front of where the trees will be planted that is to be retained as per clients wishes. There will be clipped formal shrubs (cherry laurels probably) between the trees. The client asked for the laurels. There are concrete planters that have formal boxwoods in them as per clients' wishes. I would rather have deciduous trees because everything is shiny and evergreen so far. Also, yews are not one of the choices for replacement trees. I am attaching the list of allowable trees. I hear what you're saying Ron, but the trees are going between the windows. I can give more pics now too for a feel of the building. Things have changed since the second pic the client had the grass redone and the planter is full of clipped boxwoods. LR
Maybe you can find Sorbus aucuparia 'Fastigiata'. With a project like this, it's probably mostly a matter of what you can find that has the desired size now and looks good to the client at planting time. The perfect choice may not present itself among what is currently available at outlets you check, or appeal to the customer. Acceptance by the client may drive quite a bit of the planting of trees (and shrubs) where they do not work out over the long term. The designer may have had better ideas that were rejected, if even offered up in the first place. The corner planter needs something much bigger and meatier than the lavender and sutera, which look like wispy little weeds in this setting. The box (Buxus) is also too short to be in scale, and clipped it just repeats the overbearing architectural elements present (the closer it gets, the worse that brickwork looks). As long as dinky and stilted is insisted upon, the planting will not be able to do much for the building.
everything was just planted last year. the boxwood will grow to 4' plus. It was clipped when planted so it didn't look scraggly. People rarely water anything on this site.
Walking to the market I thought of coralbark Japanese maple. That would really stand out against the background color provided by the brick there. And its vase-like habit should work there for some time. However, you would have to get clean stock and have clean ground there, if this came infested (see discussions of Japanese maple disease problems elsewhere on this site) or became infested after planting that could be a real headache as this is a job rather than something you are planting for yourself. Another used in landscaping of commercial buildings here is redvein enkianthus. Makes a nice pattern against walls and grows to the right size for the space you have - but not right away, by any means. A bank here has recesses along the south side, with one enkianthus making an outline in each (the wall behind each section is a window, so the shrubs can be seen from inside the building as well as out). Being a heather family thing you'd think it would hate this hot exposure but these seem to have done pretty well. Again, it would depend on what the customer(s) thought of how this plant looks, and if you could come up with ones they thought were big enough.
Too big. Listed as 20' x 10', which to my mind means 40' x 20' comes next. Also, catalogs routinely understate the spread of a tree to an even greater degree than the height. Cutting-raised Persian ironwoods of normal habit, not selected for narrowness grow as huge vases, like Chinese witchhazels on steroids. A 20' 'Ruby Vase' would probably in reality be wider than 10' much or most of the time. Like the stewartia, this is not one where you can do much lopping of side branches without it looking lopped.
Thanks, I found out so much conflicting information on the size that I figure it was too good to be true. Some others I am going to look into are Populus tremulus 'erecta' and Quercus rober 'Regal Prince'. L
Okay, so those trees seem way too tall and I think I'd rather go with Dawyck beech or Columnar hornbeam. L
Populus tremula root-suckers and the pale bark would disappear against that background. Regal Prince = 'Long' is a hybrid oak rather than a pure Q. robur cultivar and in any case will grow far too large: one site estimates 45' x 20' in only 20 years. Unless you are planning to split the difference between what you can get big and impressive now and something that will stay in scale over the long term - possibly acceptable to the customer or at least what is necessary to satisfy them - nearly all the choices you have mentioned are TOO BIG. If you can find genuinely strictly upright sugar maple cultivars that may be your best bet - as is often the case your first thought (or one of them, anyway) may have been the best. While too large eventually the old Acer saccharum 'Newton Sentry' remains amazingly strict for a long time, if one of the newer offerings from that species really is semi-dwarf or dwarfish and you can get it in a fairly generous size to start with I'd try that. http://www.jfschmidt.com/introductions/apollo/index.html
A Fagus sylvatica 'Dawyck' at the Seattle arboretum was 86' tall by 2004-5. In 1993 this specimen had an average crown spread of 13'. Other examples, elsewhere in Seattle measured 66' tall, 54 1/2' tall, and 56 1/2' during 2004-5. The 54 1/2' one had an average crown spread of 21' in 1993. Slow, but not small. Carpinus betulus 'Fastigiata' had produced heights of 67', 54 1/2', and 52' in Seattle by 2004-5. One at the Arboretum there had an average crown spread of 31' in 1987; one of those in the planting elsewhere in town where a 67' height was recorded in 2004-5 had an average crown spread of 26' in 1988. Neither small nor narrow. The tidy, predictable and handsome shape of this clone endear it to lovers of the ordinary and uniform: those who prefer picturesque individuality may be bored by it. Compared to regular hornbeams it colors darker in the fall and bears few seed-clusters. As for ultimate size: one planted in England in 1902 was 85' tall by 1984. A more slender version from Holland, sold since the 1990s, is 'Frans Fontaine' -Jacobson, Trees of Seattle - Second Edition (2006)
Hi Laura Where is the lot line for this commercial property? How far away from the building could the replacement trees be planted and still be located on the private property? Any tree or shrubs would need to be set back from the building and foundations for full mature canopy and minimal potential interference with the building footing and perimeter drains. The City of Vancouver have recommended list of trees for use in replacement. May you could consider Halesia carolina or Rhus typhina or Hinoki cypress. They are small at maturity trees, slower growing or open structured (minimal blocking of windows) and I've seen the snowbell and the cypress used locally on the northsides of buildings.
