Trees in the average Nashville yard don’t need to be watered for a year or two after planting. Try ten years. The more faithfully you water, the faster your tree will grow. If you don’t water, your great-grandchildren might enjoy the shade of the tree you plant. But probably not. It’s much more likely the tree will just die. So, no matter which tree you choose, water religiously. Water for years. You’ll be glad you did.

Acer rubrum – Red Maple
A red maple will be 60’ high and probably as wide at maturity. This is a nice size for a city or suburban lot. The tree offers excellent shade and truly spectacular fall color in the better cultivars. With good care and plenty of water – it can tolerate quite damp sites – it should grow 1 ½ to 2’ per year.
Best cultivars: “Autumn Blaze” orange-red fall color on a really fast growing tree. “October Glory” long lasting red fall color with a very good mature shape. “Red Sunset” orange to red early fall color with good mature shape. The last two cultivars are definitely better, but there’s no denying “Autumn Blaze” will get there faster.

Acer saccharum – Sugar Maple
This is a majestic, slow growing maple. It will be 70’ tall or larger with a very dense, thickly branched oval crown. The trunk is usually short. Fall color is a mind bending yellow-gold. This is the tree your grandmother had in her front yard in East Nashville. Everyone should have one.
All sugar maples are good trees, but quality cultivars include: “Legacy”

Betula nigra – River Birch
River birch is big, beautiful, and fast growing. The tree works much better than any white birch in this area. White birch is generally ugly, and ugly, and ugly and then it dies. Multi-trunk specimens for river birch are great but use caution. No large shade tree, birch included, should be planted within 20’ of a house. All the landscapers who have planted one next to a house need to be disciplined rigorously.
The bark on a river birch peels cinnamon and brown, shaggy, and fascinating to small children. Fall color is soft yellow.
A spot which is wet in the spring and drier in the summer is ideal. Birch are extremely tolerant of wet soil.
Best cultivar: “Heritage” almost pink / white, peeling bark when young, very fast growing.

Fagus grandifolia – American Beech
A very large, slow growing native tree with smooth, thin bark, dark green summer leaves and bronze fall color. This is a magnificent tree. Read Peattie and Audabon on beech trees and passenger pigeons. You’ll be compelled to plant one.

Gingko biloba – Gingko or Maidenhair Tree
A slow growing, pest free, beautiful tree. With age it becomes massive, in youth it is open and pyramidal. Fall color is consistently wonderful – a clear, shining yellow.
This tree is planted extensively along the streets of Manhattan and seems to thrive.
Plant only male cultivars such as: “Autumn Gold”

Liquidambar styraciflua – Sweetgum
A fast growing (2 to 3’ per year if you water it) native tree, upright oval in form, always neat in habit. Summer leaves are shiny dark green, full color can vary from gold to scarlet to purple – often on the same tree.
Sweetgums bear sweetgum balls, the bane of the barefoot. Either plant the tree well away from patio / outdoor living / playing areas, or plant the fruitless cultivar: “Rotundiloba”.

Liriodendron tulipifera – Tulip Poplar, Yellow Poplar
This is the Tennessee State Tree. Tulip Grove, the old plantation across from the Hermitage, is named for its stand of Tulip Poplars. It is the largest growing native shade tree in eastern North America. Trees 200’ high have been recorded. It grows fast. With water, three feet per year is not uncommon. It tends to develop a very long, clear trunk and, in youth, a pyramidal outline.
Tulip poplar has a lovely flower – a little yellow, a little green, a little orange. It resembles a small tulip – therefore, the common name. I once had a bedroom with a window that looked straight into an old tulip poplar. It was wonderful in bloom.
Fall color is yellow to gold, not electric, but lovely. Tulip poplars are becoming a common park and estate tree in England. The English love it.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides – Dawn Redwood
Dawn Redwood is a weird tree – a deciduous (drops it’s leaves in winter) conifer (has needles – like a fir, or pine or hemlock). It is 100 million years old, according to Michael Dirr. That’s a long, long time. It was actually native to North America some 15 million years ago, then disappeared. It was discovered in China during the 1940’s.
Dawn Redwood grows fast. Again, according to Dirr, 50’ in 20 years. He mentions a 30 year old tree 120’ high. The tree has a long, straight trunk with reddish bark. The bark peels in strips and can look quite shaggy. Leaves are soft, feathery, light to bright green. Fall color is red / brown. The shape is a tall, narrow pyramid.
I have used this tree for almost instant screening and in small groves. I never design symmetrical, marching trees parading down a drive (one always dies), but if I did, I would use Dawn Redwood. It is beautiful – so soft. It contrasts well with more muscular maples, oaks, and beeches.

Nyssa sylvatica – Black Gum, Sour Gum, Black Tupelo
Shiny green leaves in the summer, intense scarlet color very early in the fall – this tree carries the most intense fall color of any large Southern American native. In full glory it can outshine a maple.
A Black Gum loves water. The more it gets the faster it grows. In a dry spot where the homeowner refuses to water, the tree refuses to grow.
Don’t buy a big Black Gum. They transplant much more happily small. A five gallon container is about as big as I would go.

Quercus palustris – Pin Oak
Pin Oak is a fast growing native oak. It can easily grow 2’ per year in its youth.
The shape of the tree, especially in youth, is beautiful. The lower branches are pendulous, the middle branches horizontal, the upper branches upright. This creates a magnificent outline. Given plenty of room the lower branches can touch the ground and the tree ascends above in a huge tower of green. Did you read that?
The lower branches can touch the ground.

This means you cannot:
1) Drive a car beneath it (you’ll scratch the car or disfigure the tree). Don’t plant it near a street or drive. Green Hills Mall was truly foolish to plant Pin Oaks between streets and tall buildings. Squashed Oak is the result. Actually, Dead Oak is the true result.
2) Walk beneath it. Oaks have stiff, hard twigs. You’ll poke your eye out – as my mother used to say.

Planting this tree in a small yard is an investment in future disaster. Give it lots of room and enjoy one of the great American Oaks.

Quercus phellos – Willow Oak
Visit Bates Nursery and Garden Center and gape and gasp at the Willow Oak planted in David & Renee Bates’ back yard next door to the nursery. David, who is considerably younger than I, can remember when this tree was planted. I have been showing people this tree as an example of Incredible Oaks for about 20 years.
Leaves are light and airy, the trunk is massive, growth rate is excellent, fall color is a lovely, lingering yellow to yellow / brown.
Can there be a better tree?

Quercus rubra – Red Oak
Another massive, fast growing, beautiful oak. The Richland-West End Neighborhood Association has planted many, many, red oaks in the last 10 or 15 years. Considering the neglect street trees endure, the survival rate has been astonishing.
Red oaks have a fat, full shape, sometimes on a long, bare trunk. Austin, Texas has some specimens that rival Middle Earth’s Ents for cathedral – like majesty.
Fall sometimes produces striking red to scarlet-red fall color.
Across the street from my house are four red oaks, planted at the same time, two in front of each of two houses. Trees on the left have been well watered. They are about 35’ tall. Trees on the right have been neglected. Maybe-MAYBE-20’ tall.
Water your trees.

Tillia tomentosa – Silver Linden
This is the tree a Silver Maple wants to be. Dirr, in Manual of Woody Landscape Plants describes the leaves as “Lustrous, shimmering, glistening gleaming…” Michael Dirr is not a man easily captivated by adjectives, but the summer beauty of a Silver Linden is truly beyond the reach of language.
A Silver Linden is tough. It is hardy. It is gorgeous. Unfortunately, it is hard to find.