Arbor Day Foundation Trees

Mom got the membership package from the Arbor Day Foundationn and here's what I'm doing/thinking of doing with them.

It's missing a redbud, but that's not necessarily worth fussing over.

The remaining redbud has been planted next to the chickens composting yard.

The 5 Norway spruced have been planted in milk crates.
The hope is to sell or give them away once they are much bigger.
I might half bury them till then, or maybe just berm the sides.

The crapemyrtles are in the fridge,  they will be planted at mom's house.

The next three are planted in a single bucket for now.

Washington Hawthorne:
Barely passable as an  edible, the seeds are poisonous.
Grows pretty tall, which I don't like.
Stinky flowers.
I could plant it along the north fence line and mostly ignore it, then pollard it at the height I want.
I'm not getting the appeal.


Sargent crabapple
Passable as an edible.
Does pollinate other apple trees, it's pretty,can take a graft, provide smoking wood and treats for the bunnies.
I see it on the north fence line, but getting a fair bit of my attention .

Flowering Dogwood.
Barely passable as an edible.
I don't care for how they look.
This will go in a pot to grow out and sell/trade/give away.
I'm not sure it's worth the soil.

Now that I've gone through the list,  I feel very shorted by  the missing redbud !

Still, only two of these trees actually repel me.
Even the crapemyrtles look nice and don't tease me with berries that are hardly worth the effort or danger.

Lots of people like flowering dogwoods, but the Hawthorne kind of feels like a smack in the face.


The crabapple is dead sexy, redbuds are potential rockstars and the Norway spruces are solid.


Yall got any other ideas of how to use these plants?

there’s a few things, even beyond other Crataegus, that can be grafted onto the hawthorns. here’s an older thread with some ideas:

https://permies.com/t/51054/Grafting-Hawthorn-Crataegus#411496

I also have a hawthorn which is not a plant I would have chosen (it came with the house). It does have some good qualities, though:

- the flowers are pretty from afar where you aren’t smelling them.
- it provides food for pollinators
- songbirds like to shelter in the dense, thorny tangle of branches
- the berries are pretty and stay on the tree all fall and winter since birds ignore them until there is absolutely nothing else to eat.

That hawthorn information is fascinating.
It still wouldn't be my pick,  but frankly, the human ingenuity involved in figuring out these grafts is amazing.

One of my kids works at a local farm store, so they were doing an Arbor Day tree give away. They brought me home a White Kousa Dogwood. I'm glad for it. I love dogwoods and it will fit nicely in my food forest/ornamental garden.

Kousa Dogwood are said to have tasty fruit!

i’m a fan of kousas, but they’re not for everyone.

Weird thing, we went to our church sisters house to give her a ride and she had just yanked some trees out of her yard.
One was a redbud, that had been cut down at about 3" diameter,  but was growing back.
This time she took a chunk of roots with it.
I brought it home and lacking a better spot plunked it IN the chicken yard.
I'm hoping it's established enough to survive the hens, and the way it came back from being coppiced gives me hope.