Benjamin Mejia, owner of Sunshine Landscape Design, share his tips for selecting the perfect shade tree.

Hello friends, in this month’s blog we are going to talk about the trees that are best for shade. When it comes to choosing a tree, there are a lot of factors to consider. The most important should be its toughness against inclement weather conditions. We know how dramatic are our temperatures are here in Texas, especially during the summer.

What we want is a tree that can survive both conditions, cold temperatures and also extremely hot temperatures. There are quite a few trees that can do very good in Austin and surrounding areas. Today I’ll give you three to consider.

Monterrey Oak

The first one is a Monterrey Oak. This tree is considered to be a medium size tree. This puppy grows 30-40’ tall with a spread of up to 40’. All it needs is deeper soil and lots of sun.

Bur oak

The second one is a Bur Oak. This is a very enormous tree; it grows up to 70+ feet, large leaves and ginormous acorns. Make sure you give this boy plenty of room to grow. Same requirements as the Monterrey Oak, deeper soil and lots of sun.

Cedar Elm

Our third and last candidate is the Cedar Elm. This is one of our favorites; it grows 30-50’ tall and has gorgeous buttery yellow leaves. Cedar Elm’s are very drought tolerant and can grow on our shallow rocky soils. With this one you are accomplishing 3 factors, shade, color and tolerance.

Whether you pick the colorful tree, the enormous tree or maybe just and average size tree, we are sure you are going to love it. Remember to follow the guidelines when planting your tree, but if you are unsure of how to do it, give us a call we are glad to help. This is all for today my friends, stay tuned for next month’s blog. Hill Country Landscape Design.