Grow a crabapple tree to catch the attention of wildlife and your fellow gardeners. The spring blooms look gorgeous and birds eat the fruit.
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Crabapple Tree Care and Growing Tips
- Common name: Crabapple, flowering crabapple
- Scientific name: Malus species
- Zones: 3 to 9
- Attracts: birds, bees
- Light needs: Full sun
- Size: 10 to 25 feet high and wide
- Grown for: Prolific early spring blooms and late-season fruit
- Foliage: Green or bronze leaves that turn yellow in fall.
Extremely popular in the North, crabapple trees provide four seasons of backyard interest. This beautiful tree’s spring blooms are often so robust that they completely hide the branches. Abundant, lightly fragrant flowers give way to leaves and then to fall and winter fruit.
Shop for new varieties that are bred to resist common crabapple diseases, such as powdery mildew, scab and fire blight, and offer more colorful fruit. Look for upright, spreading and even weeping forms.
Crabapple Tree Cultivars to Try
Grow Profusion for violet-pink blooms and small red fruit, Prairifire for red buds that open to dark pink blooms, or Adams for dull pink flowers.
Another option to add drama and grace to any landscape is a Ruby Tears weeping crabapple tree, Malus ‘Bailears‘ (zones 4 to 7). It will grow to be about 8 to 10 feet tall and about 12 to 15 feet wide. This showy tree with pink flowers is an excellent accent for a small garden and it attracts wildlife. In fall, you will enjoy the colorful dark red foliage.
Plant it in full sun and moist, well-draining soil. Ruby Tears can tolerate drought conditions in the landscape once established. Prune in late winter.
Check out the top small shrubs for small spaces.
Wildlife Benefits of Crabapple Trees
A crabapple tree offers multiseason appeal. Its leafy branches provide shelter and nest sites in spring, and ripe orange, yellow or red berries make a meal in winter.
Birds, pollinators and butterflies love crabapple trees, especially in spring and summer when the fragrant pink, white or red blossoms turn into small fruits that last into winter. Waxwings, American robins, northern cardinals, gray catbirds, grosbeaks and tanagers love the sweet treat. And don’t be surprised to see blue jays and eastern bluebirds snacking on the fruit.
Discover more backyard birds that eat berries.
In addition, crabapples are very attractive to native bees. The trees need bees to pollinate their blooms.
