Garden Design with Japanese Maples

It’s Dave Epstein and it is Japanese maple time here on Growing Wisdom. We’re going to talk about similar types of Japanese maples that I have in my own garden, and why I like using Japanese maples for color.

You maybe familiar with the blood good Japanese maple but that’s big Japanese maple with the nice leaves with the deep burgundy color. A lot of folks have that one, but there are others out there that really can add a nice pop of color to the environment. I want to tell you about four of them.

The first one is right behind me. This is something I’ve got several years ago, one of those sales at the end of the season at Big Buck store. It’s a dissectum which means it’s a cutleaf Japanese maple. It’s obviously burgundy and it weeps, and I love how dark it is. It’s held up you know when you get one of those things at the end of the season you don’t know, but we’ve baby this and it looks really nice, and it’s lived for several years. So I’m very confident about it.

We’ve also got a yellow one called orange dream which is just fantastic. Yellow works so well in the landscape. Again, it really pops out. It gives you that super color, and then we have one that has several different colors a little wide, a little red, a little green and that’s called butterflies. The leaf is fairly small.

The fourth one I want to tell you about is viridis and it’s a weeping small form of a green Japanese maple. And even though green is very common in the middle of the summer, it’s a lighter green. It does stay in out, and the cut leaves look so fantastic. I’ve put my cutleaf Japanese maple right next to some hostas, so I have that nice contrast between the big leaf of the hosta and the smaller leaf of the Japanese maple.

All of these Japanese maples will also stay small. We’re talking five to eight feet which makes them ideal for smaller landscape. Four Japanese maples for you to choose from, whether you have a large or small garden, each of those will add something special. And we’re adding lots of videos here at Growing Wisdom. Come back every week and check us out.