Whether you are a home gardener or landscape professional, choosing the right tree or shrub for your site is an important decision. Now there’s a Cornell University website --the Woody Plants Database -- that can help you select the species most likely to thrive where you plant them.
“Most people recognize the benefits of tree planting – from sequestering carbon to providing shade to improving aesthetics,” says Nina Bassuk, director of Cornell University’s Urban Horticulture Institute. “But it’s important to make sure that the trees we plant are well-suited to the site before we invest time and money in planting them.”
In her decades of research on trees that can stand up to tough city life, Bassuk identified five key site characteristics that determine the chances of success – or failure – of particular woody plant species:
- How much light the site receives (full sun to shade).
- How cold it gets in winter (USDA Hardiness Zone).
- Soil moisture (from poorly drained to prolonged dry periods).
- Soil acidity or alkalinity (pH).
- Salt spray or salty soils (from road runoff or the ocean).
Simply plug that site information into an online form, and the Woody Plants Database website determines which of nearly 400 trees, shrubs and woody vines should perform well. You can also refine your search to include only certain sized plants, or evergreen or deciduous species.
The site also includes detailed profile pages for each species that include:
- Images showing species’ ornamental characteristics through the year.
- Potential insect or disease problems.
- Notable cultivars available in the trade.
- Additional information on ornamental characteristics and environmental constraints.
The website focuses primarily on species well-suited for New York and the Northeast, but may be useful in regions with similar environmental conditions, notes Bassuk, who received the prestigious 2008 Scott Medal from Scott Arboretum for her work.
Bassuk traces the roots of this website back nearly 10 years, to a Cornell Faculty Innovation in Teaching grant to develop a website for students in the Creating the Urban Eden course. Bassuk teaches the course along with her husband Peter Trowbridge, chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture.
“Originally, we just wanted a kind of online textbook to help students learn to identify these plants and their characteristics,” recalls Bassuk. “But we realized that we could turn this information into a powerful tool to help people make better choices about what to plant.”
Visit the Woody Plant Database website: http://hosts.cce.cornell.edu/woody_plants
Editors: Click on images above for high-resolution images.