Crabapple trees are versatile ornamental trees with four-season features that make them great landscape options. The many types of crabapple trees allow them to be either the backbone or highlight of any landscape design. Some designers use crabapples both ways. Knowledgeable choices can provide specimen plants for residential, municipal, and commercial landscapes. Smaller flowering crabapple trees are valuable in shrub borders for beauty as well as food for wildlife.
I recently visited The University of Massachusetts Cold Spring Orchard in western MA where 18 kinds of ornamental crabapple trees form the backdrop to the Founders' Memorial Garden. Cold Spring Orchard is the demonstration, research and educational fruit-growing resource for UMass Amherst. The Garden honors those people who bought this orchard in 1962 and gave it to the University for fruit research.
Five University of Massachusetts landscape architecture students designed the south- and east-facing garden and started construction in 2005. The crabapple planting, three rows of six trees each, extends along the east-facing length of the orchard's fruit storage building. It is easy and pleasant to walk among these trees and compare their similarities and differences.
Recent warm sunny days and cool nights have jump-started the autumn display for these crabapples. I wandered among them looking at the subtle changes in leaf colors, but what fascinated me the most were the fruit shapes and colors. The fruit of some cultivars (cultivated varieties or types)were already fully colored, while some were just beginning to develop.
Joseph E. Sincuk, orchard superintendent, says the landscape-size crabapple trees, planted early in 2006, not only enhance the Orchard's goals of research and teaching, but also function as pollinators for the standard apple trees. The trees are typical cultivars easily available to the public at their local nurseries and garden centers. Landscape-size trees are expensive, but garden coordinators wanted an immediate and effective display. These trees cost approximately $3,000.
Here are two outstanding autumn characteristics these trees exhibit:
- Various forms range from weeping to horizontal, and vase shaped to round or columnar.
- Fruits differ from 1/4" to 2" in diameter; color may be red, orange, or golden; ripening extends over many weeks.
Cultural characteristics for crabapple trees, aside from their needing full sun, cover a wide range of variables which allow ease of cultivation:
- Toleration of a wide range of soil conditions;
- Partiality to a slightly acid pH in the range of 5.0 to 6.5; and
- Hardiness in zones 3 - 5.
Disease resistance in modern cultivars has improved, but susceptibility is not eliminated. Good care and sanitation are still necessary to avoid or keep infections under control. Here are the four leading crabapple diseases. They cause mostly foliar damage and defoliation:
- Apple scab (fungus - Venturia inaequalis);
- Cedar-apple rust (fungus - Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae);
- Powdery mildew (fungus - Podosphaera leucotricha); and
- Fire blight (bacterium - Erwinia amylovora.)
My next article contains information about cultural practices used for this ornamental crabapple planting, plus a listing of the eighteen cultivars with the pros and cons of each.
Please send an e-mail to me with information, if you know of any other ornamental crabapple demonstration gardens.
©Text and photograph by Georgene A. Bramlage, September 10, 2006. Reproduction without permission prohibited.
Georgene A. Bramlage - Suite 101 Landscaping Feature Writer and Topic Editor Free-lance Garden and Landscape Writer and Consultant
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