Want a tree but worried you don’t have a big enough garden? Columnar and compact varieties are the answer!
Trees are an important addition to many gardens, giving cover, shade and seclusion as well as view-blocking foliage, while stems above head height add a different dimension to the plot. If you want to add a tree to your garden, it pays to make a wise choice, especially when space is limited. Thankfully there are upright forms of well-loved trees that make them a more viable option in a smaller site.
Audrey Hepburn once said: “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow”, which is absolutely true and never more so than when planting a tree. It shows we are committing to the future, acknowledging that we may or may not see it fully grown, but that we should expect it to live for decades, if not hundreds of years.
When space is at a premium, however, we must consider which trees are sensible to plant in terms of ultimate size, shape and the volume of roots they will produce. Planting large trees near to buildings will always lead to root damage of foundations. Root barriers can be installed to reduce this risk, but the bigger the tree and the closer it is to a structure, the greater the threat. You can’t completely avoid this risk to buildings, but remember that the average tree will have roots twice as wide as its canopy at maturity.
Fastigiate, or upright, columnar trees are useful in smaller spaces because their canopies are often not so dominant as to obscure all the sunlight to the garden and cast too much shade on other plants. Many conifers, such as Cupressus sempervirens (pencil or Italian cypress), synonymous with the Tuscan countryside, are naturally narrow and upright. Most will grow in the UK given a favourable spot and reasonable drainage. Looking beyond conifers, however, there are examples of many good deciduous trees that have a naturally upright form. Populus nigra ‘Italica’ (Lombardy poplar) is acommon sight in the south-east of England (particularly Kent), where it is used as a windbreak to edge fields of hops and fruit trees. It’s on a scale that would require a very large garden to accommodate even one tree though, so will never be a natural choice for most of us. Trees such as prunus ‘Amanogawa’ (the flagpole cherry) are infinitely better suited to a smaller garden and it has remained popular for decades in UK nurseries and garden centres as a really good plant, with large, pink, semi-double flowers in spring and excellent maroon, red and orange autumn colour.
There’s something for everyone with this next range of slow-growing, but ultimately quite large fastigiate beech trees: Fagus sylvatica ‘Dawyck’, ‘Dawyck Gold’and ‘Dawyck Purple’. These are green, golden and purple-leaved respectively, with the purple-leaved form bein
