We have lots of tears being shed in our State Botanical Gardens these days, but don’t be concerned. It’s simply because each of the UT Gardens campuses continues to develop fine collections of weeping trees.
Seriously though, plant breeders and nursery professionals are ever expanding the choices of weeping species. Weeping plant forms appeal to gardeners and landscapers because they can provide versatile attributes. Depending on site placement and companion plants, they can provide a graceful, elegant background or screen, or become a brilliant, in-your-face specimen plant. Last month we included a photo of a weeping European hornbeam with our Plant of the Month article showcasing just what a focal point a weeping plant can become.
Our February plant, Taxodium distichum ‘Cascade Falls’, is a perfect choice for what it brings to the garden, with or without a needle on it. It is a deciduous conifer, so it drops its needles in fall and produces cones that are sterile. Fall color is burnt orange to coppery cinnamon. Grafted onto our native bald cypress, this weeper reaches 10 to 15 feet tall and wide in 15 to 20 years. Your kids may see it hit 30 feet. As Jason Reeves of the Jackson Gardens once wrote, ‘Cascade Falls’ “can look like a giant Mr. Snuffleupagus (a wooly mammoth) from PBS’s Sesame Street with multiple upright weeping leaders to one central leader with numerous cascading branches.”…