Four Trees for Small Gardens

Trees are great additions to your garden design for many reasons, like:

Shade, of course. While flowers and vegetables love the sun, having pockets of cool shade in your garden is a must in the heat of summer.
Visual interest. Trees draw the eye upward and can provide texture, color and form at eye level and higher.
Shelter for birds. If you’re like me and love an active garden full of flying friends and bird song, trees are a must. The birds will shelter in trees near bird feeders because they feel safe and odds are, they will build nests in them.

But let’s face it: when you have a small garden, most trees are entirely too big to even consider. They may look petite and cute in their buckets on the garden center lot but when you read they will be 15-20 feet tall (or twice that!) at maturity, you (hopefully!) know they can’t go home with you.

So what’s a gardener to do when they have a small space that won’t accommodate a typical tree? Dwarf fruit trees exist, so that is one option if you’re creating an edible garden. I really wanted to add a dwarf nectarine or apricot tree but even they, at around 10 feet, seemed too large. So over the years, I’ve added a few small trees – one might even say some are technically shrubs – to provide bits of shade, interest and bird habitat. I’ve been very happy with each one.

1. Rose of Sharon

Rose of Sharon is VERY popular because of the extended and intense show of flowers it puts on every year. Left unpruned, it will sprawl into an enormous flowering shrub. But with maintenance and careful pruning, it makes a great small tree. I have a few, some in a shrub form, and two pruned to be more tree like with only 3 or so main trunks. They get heavy with flowers, blooming from mid-late summer til frost, so I prune yearly to maintain the shape. Timing is important, as you don’t want to chop off buds. I do a hard cut when all the leaves are dropped and shape it up in the late fall or early spring.

There are many varieties of Rose of Sharon, a member of the hibiscus family, ranging from deep burgundy to pure white, pinks, lilacs and blues. The pollinators, butterflies and hummingbirds absolutely love it. The only downsides are the need to prune to keep the shape you want, and it drops blooms daily for months, which can pile up. But nothing a rake and lawnmower can’t handle – it’s worth it!

2. Weeping Redbud

My neighbor has a large open lawn with three enormous eastern redbuds that are stunning in bloom. I love them but there is no way would one fit in my garden. So when I learned there was a dwarf weeping redbud, I had to have one. I love “weeping” varieties of trees – the giant weeping willows on my great grandparent’s farm are likely the reason. But again, too large. During the pandemic, I tackled a project to build a spiral path in the garden, and decided one branch of the spiral would end in a small ornamental tree. Off I went to Faddegons, a favorite local nursery. I came home with a weeping redbud, and started digging.

This tree has been an absolute delight. In winter, it has a very interesting shape, even without leaves. It fills out with flowers early, long tendrils of bright pink-red blossoms. These are short-lived but the leaves make this tree’s beauty. Every leaf is heart shaped, and they cascade down in waves, to the ground. I trim the bottom a bit each year so it has a flat bottom, but that’s all the maintenance.

The birds are enthralled with it – I often walk into the garden and they explode out of the redbud. Sometimes it seems like this tree is singing – you can’t see them, they’re inside under the cover of leaves, chirping their little hearts out. The tree itself hasn’t grown much more than 5-6 feet tall, so it’s quite petite. And I can’t recommend it enough!

3. Japanese Willow (Grafted)

When I began looking for another small tree that I could shape to provide shade for part of my deck, I came across a weirdly beautiful solution, a grafted Japanese willow. You’ve likely seen the shrub version of this in landscaping – this is a shrub grafted on a willow tree trunk. The result is rather Seussian – a single straight trunk topped by a wild explosion of long upright branches strung with pink and white leaves. As I understand it, the trunk height remains fixed, but the shrub on top grows and once it’s established it can be pruned into shape, or left to go crazy.

This is a 2025 addition, so it is still getting established, and has had no pruning for now. But it began growing immediately and I look forward to shaping it! For now, it’s small and I’ll still be relying on the umbrella for shade for a while, but I have high hopes for a big puffball of shade between the deck and the late afternoon laser beam of sun in that space!

4. Dwarf Cherry Trees

These really are technically shrubs, not trees. In my quest to find dwarf fruit trees, I learned about the Romeo and Juliet dwarf cherries and decided to add two Juliets. They are not being used for shade as much as for food, but if you’re also looking for a small garden tree this is a great addition. You can easily prune them into tree form, or let them shrub out. They do grow quite energetically – as with most plants, pruning stimulates more growth. These will also send up shoots from the ground around it. We prune ours on top because without that, they grow quite a bit taller than the label said! And we wrap it with bird netting after flowering and pollination but before the fruit looks edible.

The fruit is sweet-tart, gaining sweetness as they ripen. Whether a decorative or edible addition (or both), each tree produces about 4 lbs of cherries, when all the conditions align. We lost all the blossoms to 4 days of torrential rain this year – and will likely cover the trees with clear plastic next season, when the forecast is similar. But other than Mother Nature doing her thing, this is a really nice way to add both a tree and some yummy fruit to your garden without needing a lot of space!