March: Two Trees for Early Colour

Cornus mas or Cornelian cherry is a small tree or very large rounded shrub that is easy and undemanding to grow. Its main season of interest is very early spring – late February and March when small bright yellow flowers open along naked stems. It typically gets to 15 feet high and as much across. In summer it is relatively undistinguished but the attractive leaves turn a good reddish-purple in the autumn. Look out for oblong bright red fruits in late summer or early autumn – but these normally only follow a long hot summer. They are edible, apparently, and can be made into preserves. Early spring bulbs such as Chionodoxa and Scilla siberica would look good underneath or some early flowering blue crocus.

Look out for the cultivar C. mas 'Golden Glory', which has won the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. It flowers more prolifically than the species and normally at a younger age, so it is well worth seeking out. There is also the smaller variegated C. mas ‘Variegata’ which has white-edged, dark green leaves and only grows to around 10 feet high.

Later flowering and more traditional is Magnolia x loebneir. This is a beautiful, rounded, small tree which flowers on bare branches with fragrant, multi-petalled pale rose-pink flowers with long, narrow petals that emerge from darker pink buds. The leaves are mid green and the tree is deciduous. Overall height is up to 30 feet with a spread of 20 feet.

There are a number of cultivars including the popular and easy to find M. x loebneri ‘Leonard Messel’ which was a chance seedling raised at Nymans in Sussex in the 1950s which has reasonably frost-tolerant rich pink flowers opening progressively during March and April. This cultivar should flower from a young age and would be an elegant choice for a small garden, although the magnolia flowers are always at risk from late frosts but look wonderful in a good spring.

All the species grow in acid soils in the wild, but will tolerate alkaline conditions, as long as the soil is not too dry. The best time to plant is in April, adding plenty of organic matter to the planting hole, in a sheltered spot. In spring mulch with more organic matter, especially on soils which can dry out in the summer. Magnolias can be pruned to maintain a desired shape if required but given a choice, it is better not to cut them, apart from carrying out formative pruning and removal of any broken, diseased or crossing branches after flowering.

Small bulbs can be planted beneath, including mauve Crocus tommasinianus which will naturalise, flowering in spring. Clematis, especially those hard pruned in early spring that flower in the second half of the summer, such as Clematis viticella, C. ‘Etoile Violette’ and C. ‘Polish Spirit’ are all useful trained through the crowns to provide summer colour.

CAF