Homeowners often express a desire to include plants with winter interest in their landscapes. The term “winter interest” is often shorthand for shrubs and trees that hold their leaves year-round. While I am a big fan of evergreen trees—like blue spruce, mugo pine, Korean fir and native holly—my years in the garden have introduced me to many deciduous trees that are just as captivating even after they lose their leaves. These trees have excellent form, beautiful bark or persistent bright fruits:
1. Bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa)
Oak trees are renowned for their strength and longevity, but the bur oak’s charm resides in its expressive form. With a native range from Missouri to Ontario, bur oaks tolerate drought and dry soils but thrive in bottomlands. Hardy from USDA Zone 3 to 8, this cousin to the white oak (Q. alba) needs full sun to perform best. Large, oval acorns with bur-edged cups give it its common name. These cups cling to the twigs well into winter after the acorns fall and provide forage for local wildlife. Bur oaks look best in large open spaces, like meadows, where they can grow up to 80 feet tall and wide and strike their form against a bright winter sky.
2. Golden weeping willow (Salix alba ‘Tristis’)
Imported to the United States from Europe in the 1700s, Salix alba has since naturalized in our landscapes, giving it an interesting status in the garden and making us ask: “Is 300 years enough time to make it now a native?” Putting that debate aside, look to the popular cultivar ‘Tristis’, a fast-growing beauty whose year-old golden branchlets weep down from a broad crown 50 to 75 feet tall. Grow it in Zones 4 to 8, in sun or part shade, but be sure to provide a location with consistently moist to wet soil. The golden color of the twigs is most evident in winter on mature specimens massed in groves along the water’s edge.
3. Thornless honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos f. inermis)
This thornless variety of the wickedly sharp species is itself a wild native found from Pennsylvania west to Iowa and south into Georgia and Texas. (Inermis is native for unarmed.) The open canopy of its gnarled limbs arching 50 feet above a farmhouse roof is a familiar Midwestern scene. Full sun and organically rich, well-drained soil produce the best specimens, though their tolerance of heat, drought and salt make them useful street and parking-lot trees. They’re hardy in Zones 3 to 8. Don’t disdain the messy seed pods. These six to eighteen-inch-long leathery legumes hold fast to the twigs well into the winter months, an exotic-looking accoutrement worth cleaning up later.
4. Japanese stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamellia)
As one of the few landscape trees with summer blooms, stewartia has been a popular choice among gardeners since it was collected from the mountains of Japan and Korea. However, the beauty of its reddish-brown exfoliating bark makes it a winter standout throughout Zones 5 to 8. It has few pest and disease problems and little need for corrective pruning once established, but it needs a spot with morning to mid-day sun in organically rich sandy loam. Growing 20 feet or taller and at least 15 feet wide, mature, multitrunked specimens provide an eye-catching yet elegant focal point in any landscape.
5. Coral bark maple (Acer palmatum ‘Sango-kaku’)
Japanese maples are fairly ubiquitous in gardens in Zone 5 to 8, but the coral bark maple has taken its place as the current superstar cultivar. Like other Japanese maples, ‘Sango-kaku’ grows to 20 feet high and wide in full sun to part shade. Slightly acidic, sandy loams high in organic content provide the right mix of moisture retention and drainage for their roots, especially in regions with hot summers. The pale pink to vivid red bark, most prominent on younger branches, creates excellent contrast to dreary winter scenes.
6. Paper birch (Betula papyrifera)
Also known as canoe birch, this North American native is best grown in cooler regions, Zones 2 to 6, with eastern or northern exposures and consistently moist soils. Pest and disease problems arise when these trees become stressed in warm, humid climates or full sun. Multitrunked clumps with three, five or more separate stems are preferred, and these quickly reach 50 feet tall and almost as wide if left unchecked. The dazzling beauty of their bright white exfoliating bark alongside north-country evergreens like hemlock and fir makes these trees a shining star of the winter garden.
7. Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides)
This hardy native thrives in difficult soils and sunny sites from the far reaches of northern Canada to the mountains of Mexico. Individual trunks 20 to 50 feet tall with branching up to 30 feet wide naturalize effectively into groves in Zones 1 to 6. Humusy, moist soil makes them grow faster. Young trees have smooth, greenish white bark, which becomes chalky white with bumpy black patches as they mature. Plant quaking aspen in groups and groves where multiple leafless trunks stylishly emerge from the snowbanks.
8. Lace bark elm (Ulmus parvifolia)
Prized for its resistance to the Dutch elm disease that decimated the American elm (U. americana), the lace bark, or Chinese, elm is an excellent shade tree for gardens in Zones 4 to 9. Canopies 40 feet high and wide are easily achieved in average soils and full sun, though this species also adapts to dry or wet soils and tolerates shade and urban conditions. The real show is the mottled bark, which on mature trees flakes to expose a rainbow of hues from cream to orange to green. Plant it in a conspicuous spot surrounded by an evergreen groundcover as a dramatic counterpoint to its singular trunk.
9. ‘Winter King’ hawthorn (Crataegus viridis ‘Winter King’)
Truly a king of the winter garden, this cultivar of green hawthorn has form, bark and fruit that make it especially attractive when leafless. A native to the eastern United States and reliably hardy from Zones 4 to 8, ‘Winter King’ hawthorn performs best in average soils and full sun. Part shade is okay, but overly rich, moist soils cause it to sucker, ruining its specimen-tree form. Urban pollution is not a problem. Young trees quickly form a broad, spreading crown decked with one-and-a-half-inch thorns, while their exfoliating trunks reveal a rich orange inner bark. Small, edible pome fruits, called haws, ripen in early autumn and persist well into winter, providing food for birds and a unique display when covered with frost or coated with ice or snow.
Related: Love red berries in the garden? Read about four-season hollies.
10. Holiday Gold crabapple (Malus ‘Hozam’)
Tough and beautiful best describe crabapple, the wild cousin of the domesticated apple tree. Holiday Gold is a unique yellow-fruiting variety hardy from Zones 5 to 8. Though it’s adaptable to a wide range of soils, well-drained, acid soils produce drought-tolerant specimens 15 feet tall and 12 feet wide in full sun. Golden fruits with a rose blush mature through the fall and hold on into winter, until the birds find them and feast. Plant one outside a kitchen window or back porch and prune it in late winter to keep it in check.
11. Showy mountain ash (Sorbus decora)
Native throughout northeastern North America and in scattered pockets of northern Appalachia, showy mountain ash prefers cools summers and moist, acidic, humusy soils in Zones 2 to 6. Intolerant of pollution, it’s not a city tree, but its understory size of 20 feet tall and wide makes it an excellent choice for small spaces. Its smooth gray bark acquires a scaly character with age. Clusters of glossy red fruits ripen in late summer but hold on through leaf drop for a late-season show. Too bitter for humans to eat off the tree, the berries provide food for visiting birds and animals as winter sets in.
Image credits: Winter King hawthorn
by Scott Zona/CC BY 2.0; Chinese Elm
by David J. Stang/CC BY-SA 4.0; Japanese stewartia by James St. John/ CC BY 2.0; Coral bark maple by F. D. Richards/CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED; Paper birch by F. D. Richards/CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED; Thornless honey locust by Plant Image Library/CC BY-SA 2.0; Quaking aspen by djandyw.com/CC BY-SA 2.0; 'Holiday Gold' crab apple by Frank Vincentz/CC BY-SA 3.0
