Trees With Beautiful Blooms to enhance any garden.

Flowering trees are an effortless way of annually acquiring a great number of blossoms to enjoy, either as they grow outdoors, or in indoor bouquets. Many are lovely for several weeks. Here are some of the lower-growing kinds that will thrive almost anywhere in a tangle or a planned array.

Grow a dogwood for its beautiful pink or white blooms, brilliant red autumn berries, and rich mahogany foliage. A dogwood grows fast and, if five or six feet tall to start, may well bloom the year after transplanting.

The Sargent cherry flowers in late April; the blooms appear ahead of the bronzy young foliage, and seem literally to hide the branches and trunk. No wonder the Japanese have festivals at cherry blossom time!

A flowering crab apple is a brilliant bouquet for weeks in the spring. One of the hardiest is Bechtel’s crab.

The delicate blossoms of the shadbush or shadblow (amelan-chier) unfold against the gray twigs as an early announcement of spring. This tree is tough and hardy, irregularly shaped, and thrives when crowded in with others along a wall or where you will. The redbud (cercis) scatters its pink lavender flowers among the dogwood blooms. The North Carolina mountains are host to sweeps of both these trees. In cultivation, redbud thrives as far north as Connecticut.

You’ll not only appreciate the light airy shade of the locust but also, in June, the fragrant white wisteria-like flowers. Because the locust is a legume it feeds nitrogen to the soil, helping the grass beneath to grow green and lush. The silver-bell is a

casual tree, unsymmetrical in shape, sturdy and quick growing. Snowy bell-shaped flowers festoon it in such profusion in May that strangers often stop to admire. The unusual fruits are like two ovals of brown paper intersecting at right angles. Could have come from kindergarten!

The fringe tree, carefree in shape, produces tumbled masses of showy white flowers in May and June. These fragrant drooping clusters may be readily picked from the lower branches.

The shrubby vernal witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) is the spring-flowering relative of the small-tree-size common witch hazel (H. virginiana) which flowers in late autumn. The latter’s blossoms appear suddenly, overnight, with no warning at all. Tiny yellow streamers star the cold gray branches while, nearby, the last leaves of fall drift down.

The paulownia is named for princess Anna Paulownia of the Netherlands. Originally imported from China and Japan, this tree spread through the South, especially Virginia and North Carolina. It grows fast, bears flowers when six to eight feet tall, and thrives as far north as southern New England. In May pyramidal clusters of lavender flowers dramatically dominate the tree.

Certain trees are special for one reason or another: black birch because the bark is delightfully chewable with a grand tangy flavor; sassafras because of the delicious twigs and the mitten-shaped leaves and their golden autumn hue; weeping willow because just when you think spring is never really com­ing, the willows turn their long branches gold, and then char­treuse, and all at once the first peepers are singing in the marshes, and spring has kept its promise after all.

For its smooth contoured trunk and oddly twisting branches, the hornbeam is a must. And the silver poplar is your hurry-up weather vane. You see the leaves blowing silver in the sun against a black thunderhead sky just before the first large drops of a summer rain.

Even when dead, trees are often quite beautiful, lending a sense of design where they stand. We have one wonderful gray and ancient ghost along the stone wall. Part of it is host to a trailing and fragrant wistaria. In summer the stark branches are a fine contrast to their leafy surroundings. Here the pileated woodpecker occasionally settles, and in March a Carolina wren perches on the topmost twig, her little brown body vi­brating as she pours out her sonnet to spring.

Did you ever stand with your back against a tall tree’s slim straight trunk when the wind was blowing? The rhythm of the breeze bends the tree top, then its own vitality draws it back. As you lean against it you feel this and become one with these two forces—the force that sways and the force that holds.

Attracting Butterflies with Buddleia and Lilac,

Buddleia are one of the most well known plants for attracting butterflies to a garden and with very good reason.

About a half-century ago Reginald Farrar discovered the butterfly bush or buddleia in Kansu, China. Every June this delightful shrub becomes a purple waterfall of fragrant flowers.

Prune immediately after flowering or by picking the blossom sprays for the house. Plant in a rich, well-drained soil, and sunny location. While the blooms open in profusion in June they also continue the rest of the summer. They attract myriads of butterflies, especially in late autumn, hence the name.

Spirea is another “immigrant” from the Himalayas. From English gardens comes the variety Spirea arguta, the garland spirea, a foolproof hardy sort. Give sun, rich loam, moist location, and in June it is transformed to a tumbling mass of white flowers. The mahogany red seed pods in July are equally attractive. A wicked young woman so beguiled St. Peter with several sprays of meadowsweet, so runs the tale, that he inadvertently let her slip into heaven. Spirea was also a Middle Ages “strewing herb,” and Queen Elizabeth’s favorite. With this they “strewed her chambers withal.”

The Rose of Sharon, originally from Syria, suggests the great hibiscus flowers of the tropics.

Large blooms appear in July

or August and continue forming on and off till frost. Give the plant full sun, well-drained soil. It needs no pruning, attracts no bugs, makes a fine hedge. The flowers of the newer varieties are like large saucers, and nearly five inches across. They are in white splashed with red, blue, deep scarlet, and pure white. Blue Bird is an especially beautiful blue one.

Another great plant for attracting butterflies - Hybrid Lilacs

Hybrid lilacs are perhaps larger and lusher and more dramatic than the common sorts, but some are less fragrant. Persian lilacs and French lilacs are but two of the many classes to choose from, but none excel in fragrance the old-fashioned garden lilac so prevalent around the early New England homes.

When spring is really here the saucer magnolia unfolds flowers from gray twigs. The large, exotic blossoms, purple outside and white within—tropical in appearance—have a deli¬cate fragrance. They smell sort of the way a lemon drink makes you feel—fresh and cool. Though of Asiatic origin, they thrive here, preferring rich and porous soil. The best time to transplant them is, strangely enough, when they are in flower. The delicate roots will best survive bruising when in the midst of growing. Likewise, prune in the growing season.

In early June the doublefile virburnum unfurls great flat plates of flowers. The horizontal branches are covered with a perfect mosaic of blossoms with spidery sunburst centers. When fully out they completely obliterate the shrub, and resemble a fall of snow. Fine berries and autumn color are added assets.

The flowers of mockorange smell like pineapples growing in the sun. Large or small, double or single, they make graceful bouquets. In Indian country the straight new shoots of the mockorange were avidly sought by the young women. Being light in weight the shoot could be woven into excellent back

shafts.

The ingenious chiefs also used mockorange for both tobacco pipes and stems. They cut a six or eight-inch piece from the bottom of a shoot where it widened out to form a bowl. How did they clean out the pith without breaking the branch?

By imprisoning the grub of a beetle in one end. With backward escape impossible, he ate his way through the soft pith to the other end. The stem was thus hollowed, and the wider end ready to be stuffed with tobacco.

Of course there are many more plants for planting in a butterfly garden but those mentioned above are justifiably the most well known