Talking Trees with Davey Tree

Best Spring Flowering Trees - Eastern U.S.

April 21, 2022 The Davey Tree Expert Company Season 2 Episode 15
Talking Trees with Davey Tree
Best Spring Flowering Trees - Eastern U.S.
Show Notes Transcript

Natascha Batchelor from Hartney Greymont, a Davey company, in Cape Cod, shares her favorite spring flowering trees for Cape Cod's climate, as well as how she started her career in arboriculture and why she loves it. 

In this episode we cover:

  • Weather in Cape Cod (0:55)
  • Flowering trees in February (1:48)
  • Spring flowering trees (3:29)
  • Planting season in Cape Cod (5:30)
  • Plant shortage (5:47)
  • Winter in Cape Cod (6:51)
  • How Natascha started her job and why she enjoys it (7:27)
  • Cornelian cherry dogwood (11:34)
  • Redbuds (14:41)
  • Flowering dogwoods (15:53)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about when flowering trees bloom, read our blog, When Do Flowering Trees Bloom in Spring, Including Fruit Trees.
To continue reading about flowering trees, check out our other blogs on flowering trees.

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Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more, because here at the Talking Trees Podcast, we know trees are the answer.

I'm joined this week by Natascha Batchelor. She's a sales arborist in Cape Cod, Massachusetts for Hartney Greymont, which is a Davey company.

Today is part two of our series on spring flowering trees. We're looking at the eastern part of the country. Welcome to the show, Natascha. What's going on in the weather up there where you're at today?

Natascha Batchelor: Oh, it's a beautiful day. It's probably about 50 degrees and sunny.

Doug: A couple weeks ago, I had somebody from Maine, and now Cape Cod. That sounds so beautiful. Tell me a little bit about working up there.

Natascha: Cape Cod is fun. It's completely surrounded by water. It's, I guess, a peninsula. The water moderates our temperatures, so it takes a little longer to warm up in the spring and it takes longer to cool down in the winter. It makes it interesting. I like to call it the country of Cape Cod.

Doug: When does your spring hit in full force?

Natascha: It really gets cooking probably second or third week in April, and then it drags on into May. It's a really slow progression, and then all of a sudden it's summer.

Doug: Sounds about the same way down here in Pittsburgh. I love spring, but boy, when it goes from beautiful, cool spring and daffodils to 80 degrees right away, that's tough. What are some of the first spring flowering trees that you like to talk about?

Natascha: Well, I like to go back into February a little bit. I'm a huge fan of witch hazel. I just love the way the little flowers have those little tendrils and it's just the first sign that things are starting to warm up.

Then we go into really maples. I don't think people think of those as spring flowering trees, but there's that first pop of a little bit of reddish or greenish color that you get and it just makes things start to come alive.

Doug: School me a little bit on witch hazel. Is that a native?

Natascha: It is.

Doug: I've seen them down here blooming anywhere from late fall, but mostly in that January, February time down here, mostly yellow. There are some cultivars that I've seen in different gardens that actually have red flowers.

Natascha: Yes. I could be misspeaking here, but I think that's the Arnold Promise.

Doug: Oh, okay. A tough tree. It must be if it's native, right?

Natascha: Yes. It's in between shrub and tree. I've seen one. We have a heritage museum and gardens up here. It fell over, but the stem on it is about nine inches. It just grew up from there. They'll apparently fall right over and keep on going.

Doug: When something's blooming in February, it's the star of the landscape. It has to be, right?

Natascha: I agree.

Doug: What's next on your list? What would be the next thing that's going to come into bloom?

Natascha: Well, the star magnolias right now are starting to bud out. They're starting to get those white tips where they're starting to pop out of that bud. I would think if the weather continues, we'll be seeing those in full bloom next week. If it's cool enough, they should bloom for maybe two and a half weeks.

Doug: That's the trick for those spring blooms. First off, down here, the old-fashioned, like the pink magnolias, about one in seven years, we get a frost late and it just zaps those buds. That's a heartbreaker. Is the same problem for a star magnolia or those are more reliable bloomers?

Natascha: Yes. They tend to be a little bit more reliable, but also, we have the same with the pink magnolias. They come out and then we get a rain and it's over. You got to be watching the plant and then just sit there and have a cup of tea and enjoy it for that one day.

Doug: What a show, right? It might be just one day, but what a show.

Natascha: It is absolutely beautiful. Then, of course, the cherry start to bloom. We've got all kinds of different varieties, so they're blooming at different times. We actually have some right now that are blooming bright pink. Your later part of the show tends to be the Kwanzan cherries. Fruit trees are always giving us a beautiful show in the spring.

Doug: Down here, we say peaches will break your heart.

Natascha: Oh, my goodness. Yes.

Doug: I don't know how it is up there. Beautiful blooms, but one in three years, we get peaches. Tell me about growing cherries. Are they pretty easy?

Natascha: Yes. These are mostly ornamental cherries. They seem to do really well. They're used in a lot of parking lots for shopping centers and stuff like that. Those are some of your most harsh environments you can have, and they seem to do pretty well.

Doug: When do you guys start planting up there full force or has it started?

Natascha: We could be planting now. It's really dependent on the nurseries getting all the stock in. That doesn't really start to get going until May.

Doug: I was talking to our arborist down here from Davey, and he was telling me that there are some problems getting certain plants just because people have been home and they've been planting them like crazy. Have you seen that?

Natascha: Yes. There's definitely a plant shortage and it's been the talk of the nursery industry. They basically got wiped out in 2020. It was even worse in 2021. The nurseries that I talked to said that plants were the new toilet paper.

Doug: I don't know if I like that analogy, but I'll take it. It's not an instant bounce back. That's the thing that people don't understand. Planting a tree and having it ready for a consumer is a long process.

Natascha: Exactly.

Doug: I think people are just going to have to be a little bit flexible this year. I think that being flexible is going to help because you're going to be able to tell them about some trees they might not know as much about that will be available. How was your winter up there?

Natascha: It was actually pretty mild. We don't tend to get a lot of snow on Cape Cod. If we do, it melts very fast. We had good moisture. We had a good bit of rain, which was good going into the fall and coming into the spring. That's one of our main concerns, going into the winter, is not having enough soil moisture.

Doug: That sets you up hopefully for a good spring, right?

Natascha: Yes. I've seen a lot less damage from winter drying this spring so far than in the past several years.

Doug: Tell me a little bit about getting into this job. Why is it right for you?

Natascha: Oh, well, as a kid, I grew up in a somewhat rural area, so I spent all my days in the woods running around. Believe it or not, I took a test when I was in eighth grade that told me to be an engineer. I studied for math, and physics, and science all towards that engineering degree, and I went to UMass Amherst for engineering. Part of that was a class for learning what engineers do. An engineer would come in and talk to you about what it's going to be like to be an engineer. I went, "Oh, my gosh. I have made a huge mistake."

I had to pick a major to get out of engineering and I picked forestry, which start-- Growing up going into the woods all the time, that seemed like the right thing. Then I realized I did not want to be in the back 40 all by myself with bears.

I walked into the hall there that does the arboriculture program, Holdsworth Hall, and I saw an advertisement for, "Do you like people? Do you like plants? Be an arborist." I took an arboriculture class and I never looked back. I found out years later that that display that I had seen had been left there by a Davey manager. I didn't know till 15 years later.

Doug: That's pretty cool. You love plants. Tell me about the relationship with the people, about seeing so many different people every day and helping them with their problems.

Natascha: Well, it's pretty great. I like to start conversations about what do they want out of their yard. Oftentimes they'll bring me in and they'll ask me, "What should I do with my tree?" I'll ask them, "Well, how do you feel about the tree? Do you love this tree? Do you not love this tree? Let's talk about what you want in your yard because it's your property. This is where you spend your time."

That's the part about people. You get to see trees and shrubs through their eyes.

Doug: That's part of that relationship that I have with my Davey team too, in that I live in this oak forest, which is a challenge, big old oaks. One comes down about every winter, and so I'm replacing it with-- We talk about what to put in. I want more diversity and I like that. I like having an expert to coach

me through it. Even though I love gardening and I love trees, that person will tell me like, "Listen, that one is marginal in our area," or, "You don't have the right situation for it," whatever it might be. I always like to ask an arborist what it's like, that feeling when you go to a property and you can actually save something, one of our beloved trees that we think is going to die. Tell me about the feeling of saving something when you get to the property.

Natascha: It's actually pretty thrilling. I had an incident last year where I walked onto the property to look at something completely unrelated to what was going on. I came around the corner and there was a backhoe about to dig the roots out of a 25-inch locust tree about two feet from the trunk. I was like, "Wait, stop." Fortunately, the backhoe was too small. The guy's like, "I can't get through it," and I'm like, "Please, don't get through it." We actually contacted a horizontal driller to go under the roots and he had great success with that. That tree is perfectly healthy. I shudder to think what would have happened if they brought a bigger backhoe in.

Doug: You saved it.

Natascha: I did. It was really thrilling. When I found out from him that he had called the horizontal driller and that's the way they were going, I had like a woo-hoo.

Doug: That's awesome. That's a great story. Let's go back to a few other spring flowering trees, if you've got any more that you can think of that you would recommend for people to plant in the east. Anything on your mind?

Natascha: Yes. Right now, the Cornelian cherry dogwoods are starting to bloom.

Doug: Tell people all about that tree because that is an amazing tree.

Natascha: Yes. I feel like it's undervalued. It's one of those things that's, again, blooming when not a lot else is blooming. I think that it makes forsythia look like-- puts it to shame. It's just such a bright flower. They're delicate little flowers, but the tree is just so covered in them. It's just this pop of beautiful yellow.

Doug: I'll tell you what, you get a couple cardinals that land in that tree--

Natascha: Oh, boy. Yes.

Doug: It's stunning. Again, underused, but pretty tough, right?

Natascha: Yes. It can be grown as a bushy tree or a single stem tree if you prune it right. Personally, I have one coming in a week or two. It's just coming as a whip, but I'm looking forward to the fruit.

Doug: Tell me a little bit about the patience of planting a tree that size. I love planting small trees. First, I'm a cheapskate, so I want to get them for a discount, but I love putting a small tree in. I feel that I do have the patience to see it reach maturity. That's something you have to consider, certainly with your customers. Will they take a small tree like that, or do they want something that's-- They don't care what it costs, they'll put in a big tree.

Natascha: The patience pays off. I've got an alternate-leaf dogwood that's approaching about four and a half feet right now. I put it in five years ago. That's a long time to wait, but I've been able to prune it as it goes along. It's got the perfect structure. I know that the root system is perfect for the tree because they all started together. The whip and the roots all started together.

I typically encourage people to go with smaller caliper trees rather than large ones. I try to explain to them that for every inch in caliper, it takes a year of recovery. If you put a five-inch maple in, and you put a one-inch maple in, in five years, they're going to be the same size. The one-inch maple will be healthier and start to outgrow the other one.

A lot of times, that works for people, and they're able to be patient with it. Typically, it's that I have to water it for how many years when it's a bigger tree. That usually works.

Doug: Natascha, that works for me. I've learned that from just doing this podcast. Oftentimes, it's better to go with a smaller tree. First, you are going to save money, but secondly, the health in the long run of a tree definitely is superior. What else is on the list? I'm going to keep going until you quit.

Natascha: Redbuds. Again, just the way the flowers come out along the stems, it's almost surreal. If you get the regular redbuds, they're almost electric in their purple-pink color. They almost look fake. They just don't look real. They're just so gorgeous, it's hard to believe.

Doug: People who don't know redbuds, they're always amazed when they see one because of what you're saying there, because of that show. Have you experimented at all with some of the redbuds? I see some that have variegated foliage and stuff to have longer interest. Have you played with those at all?

Natascha: I put a forest pansy redbud into a client's property last year. That's got the burgundy foliage. She was thrilled with it, just having that little different layer of color.

Doug: Just as hardy as a regular redbud, we wouldn't have to worry about that. I guess it depends on the cultivar, but in general?

Natascha: It seems to do pretty well. Yes.

Doug: All right. If you have one more tree, then I'm going to let you go.

Natascha: Everybody loves a flowering dogwood. Again, you got that pop of pink or white when there's not a lot else going on. Those should be coming out in the next two to three weeks around here.

Doug: What do you like better, white or pink?

Natascha: I like the white.

Doug: Traditional.

Natascha: Yes. The pink just always seems a little bit weaker than the white. I don't know why that is. The white always seems like a stronger tree to me.

Doug: It's so funny you say that, because I inherited a pink one at this property, and there's lots of white ones everywhere. You're exactly right. No matter what I do, I have to baby that pink one to get it to do what I want it to do, but the white ones, they're on their own and they're doing their thing. Any tips in general for dogwoods to keep them happy?

Natascha: Don't plant them in full sun. They're a border plant. They're a transition plant. They're not meant to be planted in full sun. You can, but it's going to be a lot more work. They really want a little bit of shade.

Doug: All right, Natascha. Good stuff. I was hoping I was going to be able to stump you and stop you at some point, but I think you still have more trees to talk about.

Natascha: I love trees.

Doug: That's great. Thank you so much for your time, and enjoy it up there in the country of Cape Cod.

Natascha: I will. It was nice talking to you, Doug.

Doug: I hope you enjoyed both parts of our shows about spring-blooming trees. The first part dealt with trees in the western US, but includes lots of cool species which can be grown all across the country.

Next week, we talk about some amazing research that Davey Tree has compiled on climate change and what it might mean for our landscapes in the future. Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees Podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. I'd love it if you would subscribe to the podcast. Where else are you going to have this kind of fun, right? As always, we like to remind you, on the Talking Trees Podcast, trees are the answer.

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