When the weather cools and grays take over your Somers, NY, landscape, you’ll be glad to have added some unique trees that add visual interest and excitement to your yard. While evergreen trees add graceful elegance, height, color, and texture when nothing else blooms in winter, certain deciduous trees can be used to bridge the gap in fall with their bright red and yellow foliage. Here are the some popular evergreen and deciduous winter trees for adding four-season beauty to your backyard:
Blue Spruce (Picea pungens)
The Blue Spruce is an evergreen conifer with vibrant bluish-green needles. This beautiful tree is native to North America and is an excellent candidate for providing vertical structure to the landscape, making it a popular choice among homeowners. The tree’s dense needle-like foliage and pyramidal structure make it perfect for large, open backyards. The Blue Spruce can reach 30 to 70 ft in height and is also available in a dwarf form that grows between 5 to 15 ft tall. The optimal planting location of this tree is in moist soil that gets full sun to light shade. The Blue Spruce requires very little maintenance to keep it lush and healthy.
Maidenhair Tree (Ginkgo Biloba)
With its ancient beauty and stunningly shaped and colored leaves, Ginkgo Biloba can be the life of your landscape design from early to late fall. This deciduous tree that can reach 50 to 80 ft in height is hardy in zones 3-9 and represents one of the world’s oldest living tree species. Ginkgo Biloba will beautify your backyard with its fan-shaped, small, green leaves that become blazing golden-yellow foliage in fall. A word of caution, however, the Maidenhair Tree can be a cause of discomfort for people with allergies.
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Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum)
This little red, ornamental tree can be the focal point of your landscape. Japanese Maple offers hand-shaped leaves in magnificent colors. Homeowners that nurture this tree in their backyard say that the reason behind choosing this tree is to add visual interest and beauty. The Japanese Maple can grow to 15-20’ in height, and thrives in well-drained, moist soils, under full sun and partial shade.
Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides)
Quaking Aspen is known for its tall trunk, glossy green leaves, and smooth pale bark with black scars. This deciduous tree is native to colder areas of North America and can grow up to 82 ft tall. During fall, Quaking Aspen’s green leaves turn into an attractive golden-yellow or red color. This fast-growing tree is the most widely distributed in North America and will make a beautiful addition to your landscape.
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Sargent Crabapple (Malus sargentii)
If you are looking for a tree to fit a small backyard, this plant is an excellent choice. Because of its height (6-10 ft), the Sargent Crabapple can be considered both a dense tree and a large shrub. This tree has dark green foliage that turns yellow in the fall and horizontal, irregularly spread branches that expand as the plant matures.
Himalayan Pine (Pinus wallichiana)
This medium to large evergreen tree has exceptionally long, rather elegant needles that spread from its broadly spread branches. The Himalayan Pine holds the pines in bundles of five and thrives well under full sun and partial shade exposure. In spring, the Himalayan Pine produces tiny male cones and long, green female cones.
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