Weeping Trees Full of Grace

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. —Isaiah 55:12

Are you a fan of the graceful forms of weeping trees? In addition to their beauty, some provide fruit, and many of them are not very tall so will fit in most any garden. My weeping mulberry, for example, is only six feet tall. Generally they stay at the height they are when you buy them, because their growth is at the tips of their branches, growing down.

My favorites are weeping varieties of mulberry, Santa Rosa plum, flowering cherries, Yaupon holly, pussy willow, and Camperdown elm. [Pictured at left: Weeping plum trees from Nagoya Agricultural Center, Japan.]

I planted my weeping mulberry in the garden, so that when berries drop they don’t stain a patio or sidewalk. Morus alba Pendula has purple berries which are delicious and unusually sweet, and we leave most of them for the song birds. A flock of cedar waxwings visits each year when the berries are ripe. Our tree is fifteen years old and only six feet tall and weeping mulberries grow 6 to 8 feet in height, in zones 4 to 8.

My weeping Santa Rosa plum is 15 feet tall, and provides delicious plums. There is a gigantic cypress tree growing nearby that shades it more each year, and we would have more plums if the tree was in full sun, so consider that when choosing where to plant a plum tree. Santa Rosa plum trees self pollinate for fruit, prefer full sun, do well in zones 5 to 9, and different varieties reach 8 to 10 feet, and others up to 15 feet.

You know how pretty cherry blossoms are, and the weeping cherries give a gorgeous display of flowers, reaching 15 to 20 feet tall. The flowers of Higan weeping cherry Pendula resemble a pink to white cloud in the garden, and Snow Fountains flowers look like a soft white cloud has landed in your yard. Higan grows in zones 4-8, reaches 20 to 30 feet tall, and prefers full sun. Snow Fountains is also called Snofozam, prefers zones 5-8, reaches 8 to 15 feet in height, and also likes full sun.

Hollies are favorite shrubs and trees, with their shiny green foliage and red berries that song birds love. The Yaupon weeping form has varieties with red berries or with yellow berries. For best berry production plant a female that has the berries, and a male to pollinate the female. Folsom’s Yaupon weeping holly is evergreen, has red berries, reaches 15 to 18 feet tall, and grows in zones 7 to 10. The Yaupon holly is native from southeastern Virginia to Texas.

Do you love the soft catkins of pussy willows, and have room for a small tree? Salix caprea Pendula is very striking in early spring with its large silver catkins which appear before most flowers, and this tree reaches only 4 to 6 feet tall. The catkins are followed by shiny gray green leaves which are deciduous, and this pussy willow needs full sun and moist soil in zones 4 to 9.

The weeping Camperdown elm (pictured at right) or Umbrella elm has bright green leaves, grows quickly and reaches 20 to 25 feet tall. The bare branches in winter are handsome in the garden and in the summer its branches create a tent-like play haven for children. Camperdown elm is suited for zones 4-8, reaches 15 to 25 feet tall, and has dense clusters of tiny light yellow flowers in late spring. This tree originated in Scotland at Camperdown House in the late 1800s and will grow in sun to part shade.

Photo Credits: from Wikimedia.org. Weeping Plumb (top photo) by Kamui, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Cedar Waxwing by Ken Thomas (public domain). Camperdown elm by Nate Thibault.