Larry Smith and the Riverside Gardens team talk all things pots, plants and pruning in their weekly gardening column.
If you have taken a walk around Victoria Park Lake in Shepparton recently, you would have noticed the beautiful autumn display the ornamental pear trees along the east side of the lake have been putting on. While they are not one of my favourite deciduous trees, they certainly are consistent with their wonderful turn of colour every autumn.
Ornamental pears have become an extremely popular choice of deciduous tree by our customers over the past 20 or so years. This is probably due to their hardiness, consistency of autumn colour and the variety of forms that they come in. The name ‘ornamental pear’ refers to a group of trees from the genus Pyrus that include several different species and are often mistakenly bundled together under the name of Manchurian pears.
Pyrus ussuriensis is the true Manchurian pear, and it grows to about 10m high with a broad canopy. Until about 20 years ago, they were the main ornamental pear that was grown, and the name ‘Manchurian pear’ stuck with some of the newer varieties that have become popular since. Pyrus ussuriensis is native to Japan, Korea and parts of Russia and is considered one of the hardiest of the ornamental pears. The plants will produce very small pea-sized fruits that are not edible but have been used in cross-pollination to produce some of the more cold-tolerant pears we have today.
The most common ornamental pears that we sell nowadays are the Pyrus calleryana varieties that are native to China and Vietnam. These come in a range of varieties, and the most popular of them is Pyrus calleryana capital. Known for its tall, narrow form, it grows to 10m high by three metres wide in a tight column form. A newer variety, Pyrus calleryana javelin, is even narrower with a denser compact habit and could soon take over in the popularity stakes for that reason.
Another popular calleryana pear is Pyrus calleryana chanticleer, which grows in a conical form to 10m high by around 6m wide at the lower branches. These make a stately avenue tree and look great on either side of rural driveways where they have the room to reach their full potential.
Other varieties of calleryana pears include bradford, cleveland select, aristocrat and edgewood. Each has its individual characteristics, but the one thing they all have in common is that they grow rather quickly. This, in turn, means that they should be pruned regularly while they are young to allow strength to develop in the branch forks before too much weight is put on them.
Pyrus nivalis, commonly known as the snow pear, is another variety of ornamental pear. The snow pear’s main point of difference is its greyish-green foliage, which gives the tree a soft, silvery green appearance in spring and summer. The foliage still turns a vibrant bright red and orangey yellow colour in autumn, making it a feature in the garden for about nine months of the year.
We still have a range of ornamental pears in stock if you wish to choose one, but they still have some leaf colour left on them. Otherwise, bare-rooted plants are only a few weeks away, but they will be smaller and less advanced in structure.