Almost every tree that does a job here is deciduous. The shade over a patio, the flowering tree by the front door, the apple in the back corner — all of them drop their leaves in October and start again in April.
They are also the easier half of the tree catalog on this ground, for a reason that is not obvious. A deciduous tree is dormant through the hardest four months, losing almost no water while the ground is frozen. An evergreen beside it is still transpiring into a dry January wind and cannot replace what it loses. That is why winter burn is an evergreen problem, and why the deciduous list is longer, cheaper and more forgiving.
The trade is five months of bare branches, and the first real decision is not which tree — it is which of three jobs you are buying.
Three jobs, three different trees
A shade tree is infrastructure. Forty to seventy feet at maturity, planted for cooling, structure and the value it puts on a property. It needs real room, it takes twenty years to do its job properly, and where it goes is a decision somebody lives with for decades.
An ornamental is scale. Under about twenty-five feet, and therefore the right answer in all the places a shade tree is wrong — close to the house, under a power line, in a courtyard, beside an entry. Bought for flowers, bark, form or fall colour rather than for canopy.
A fruit tree is a commitment. It produces something, and it asks for annual pruning, thinning and a spray calendar in return. Entirely doable, and not a plant to buy without knowing that.
One thing all three have in common
They are bare from roughly November to April. A planting built only from deciduous trees is a planting with nothing in it for five months — which is fine if that was the plan, and a surprise if it was not. Some evergreen mass, or shrubs with winter bark and fruit, is what keeps the yard from reading as empty in January.
If you are not sure which of the three a spot wants, that is a short conversation and usually the site answers it.
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