These three steps can be used to draw different trees, no matter how complex they may seem to us at first glance.
The best blossom trees for a spring garden
Blossom trees offer brilliant ways to light up your garden at the start of the new season.
By The House Beautiful team Updated: 29 March 2023
Emilia Ilieva / 500px // Getty Images
Bursting into life at this time of year, blossom trees such as crab apple and flowering cherries, adorned with clouds of pink and white petals, are among the most inspiring sights of the changing season. Look for those small enough to grow in modest-sized gardens, or even in pots.
You can bask in the glory of spring blossom from late March to the beginning of June. Take a look at some recommendations.
• Crab apple tree: Malus
At the start the year, crab apple tree boughs are heavy with frothy, candy-coloured blooms, and then when the fruit comes, many varieties provide a fabulous display of colour that will continue from autumn into winter.
Thanks to its beautiful, delicate pink buds that open to fragrant white flowers, Malus ‘Evereste’ is a go-to tree for lots of garden designers. It can grow to 26ft so needs a fair-sized garden and should thrive in moderately fertile soil, tolerating partial shade. For small to medium sized spaces or for containers, ‘Adirondak’, which has waxy white flowers, is a good choice.
Glasshouse Images // Getty Images
Angela Slater, gardening expert at Hayes Garden World, also recommends the following varieties: ‘American Beauty’ which has deep red double flowers, ‘Hillieri’ with bright pink semi-double flowers, ‘John Downie’ with white flowers and a heavy crop of bright orange flushed red fruits, and ‘Golden Hornet’, one of the most reliable varieties producing white flowers and yellow fruits, suitable for a large container.
Crab Apple ‘Evereste’
Credit: Thompson & Morgan
Crab Apple ‘Adirondack’
Credit: Thompson & Morgan
Apple Crab Tree – John Downie
Credit: Suttons
• Ornamental selection: Prunus
Flowering ornamental cherries are very easy to grow and produce wonderful blossom from early March to late May. There are lots of varieties which range in colour, from pure white to the deepest carmine pink and from simple single flowers to many petalled doubles.
For small gardens, vase-shaped cherry blossoms, Prunus ‘Snowgoose’ and ‘Sunset Boulevard’, are ideal.
LITTLE DINOSAUR // Getty Images
Prunus ‘Snowgoose’ will grow well in a moist, chalky soil – the large flowers are almost grey-white. ‘Sunset Boulevard’ is well-suited to moderately fertile soil in full sun – the dark buds open to reveal white flowers edged with pink. A third smaller tree is Prunus ‘The Bride’, which enjoys similar growing conditions. In March and April, the pale pink buds open to a froth of large single white flowers with a vibrant deep red centre.
Angela suggests the upright pale pink Flagpole Cherry, Prunus ‘Amanogawa’ for small spaces. The flowers are slightly fragranced, too. ‘One of the best for a small garden or container is the pale pink-flowered ‘Kojo-no-mai’ as it is slow-growing and an added point of interest are its zig-zag branches,’ she reveals.
Other recommendations include ‘Kursar’, which has rich deep pink flowers and is suitable for a medium-sized garden, while ‘Taihaku’ is also known as the Great White Cherry, which, according to Angela, is possibly the best white-flowered variety. However, it’s not suitable for small gardens.
How to Draw a Tree – The Easy Way
In this post, we’ll learn how to draw a tree in just three steps. Basically, drawing trees is pretty simple, because the steps are pretty much always the same.
Any tree can be roughly sketched with simple shapes. If we look at the crowns of different trees, they look like circles, ovals, drops, or even rectangles.
We first record these shapes in our sketch and add the tree trunk and light branches to them.
Refine your sketch
Now we refine the sketch along the outlines by hinting at leaves with many small semicircles. We try to change the original shape a little bit to make the tree crown look more natural.
Once this is done, we hint at shadows by simply adding shades to the lower part of the tree crown.
We draw the trunk thickest at the bottom part and let it and its branches become narrower towards the top. In addition, we can add a few more branches.
Draw details to the tree
Depending on the size of the tree drawing, in this step, we would either have to draw the leaves individually or we can just hint at them.
In our example drawing, it is enough to just hint at the leaves. Here, however, we proceed differently than in our sketch. The half circles don’t look natural enough, so dots and isolated squiggly lines are the better choice.
For the shadowy parts, we switch to a darker pencil to keep the illusion of shadows.
Finally, we turn our attention to the trunk. We should draw it roughly and irregularly so that its surface looks like real tree bark.
