When we bought our house in late 1999, the garden was a blank slate – it was all grass. I’ll confess that I may have gotten a little carried away during the planning stages. I grew up in downtown Toronto and we had a postage stamp front yard and a concrete backyard. Our house is in midtown Toronto and it has a nice sized front and backyard. I spent a lot of time pouring over gardening magazines and websites, looking for the perfect plants.
What follows is a list of thirteen trees and shrubs that we planted after buying our house.
1. Japanese Maple
My neighbors have a Japanese Maple in their front yard. I love them and just had to have one as well, so we planted ours in the backyard.
2. Skyline Honeylocust
I love the dappled shade of our Honeylocust. It was no more than a twig when we planted it eight years ago and is now a nice-sized tree.
3. Serviceberry
Serviceberries are the perfect four season tree. In the spring they’re covered with delicate white flowers. In summer the tree has blueberry-colored berries. In the fall it has the beautiful orange leaves you see below. In the winter the many twisted stems provide nice structure for the garden.
4. High Bush Cranberry
Pretty white flowers in the spring, lovely groups of berries in the summer. I’m also amazed at how tall this shrub has grown.
5. Golden Mockorange
I love the light green color of the leaves of this Mockorange.
6. Dogwood Shrub
Pretty variegated leaves during the spring and summer, and bright red stems in the winter.
7. Dwarf Burning Bush
I love the bright red color of the Burning Bush during the fall. It complements the yellow leaves of our Honeylocust very nicely.
8. Purple Leaf Sandcherry
Pretty light pink flowers in the spring, lovely dark purple leaves in the summer.
9. Butterfly Bush
Butterflies really are attracted to this thing! Our butterfly bush is covered with monarch butterflies during the summer.
10. Rose of Sharon
This shrub is very popular in my neighborhood. I fell in love with it and it took me a while to find out what it was, but as soon as I did I bought the one pictured below.
11. Pussy Willow
After a long winter, seeing the catkins on our Pussy Willow is always a very welcome sight.
12. Forsythia
Following the Pussy Willow catkins, out come the flowers on our two Forsythias.
13. Tinkerbelle Lilac
Unfortunately, our Tinkerbelle Lilac didn’t survive the winter a couple of years ago. I loved the delicate light pink flowers that bloomed after traditional lilacs faded.
