Bon, To give you some things to consider, you might want to take a look here. For some reason it doesn't let me link it, but here is the URL.

http://www.tcpermaculture.blogspot.com/2011/05/plants-nitrogen-fixers.html

Bon, Is it possible to do the earth work first? If you have erosion, then that would be the first thing I would worry about. Put you swales in on contour so you land will retain rainfall instead of running off and taking soil with it in the process. Form a soft mound on the low side of the swale with the topsoil you remove and plant your overstory trees there. If, like most of us, you will have to add trees over a period of years, just cover the area with a ground cover. I would probably plant clover, then just plant right into it as I could afford trees. The clover will improve your soil as you develop the area. Don't just plant one guild, but several. Remember that those pecan trees are going to get huge, so you may want to consider using nurse trees that you can take out as the pecans grow bigger. You won't want to put your apple trees so close to the pecans that they would be shaded out, for example. Nor would you want to have to remove them because they were expensive to put in. So make another guild using the apple tree as your overstory. Don't forget berries of all kinds.

Keep the ground covered, even if it is not something permanent. Consider beans and cowpeas if that is all you can afford at first. It is normally beneficial to do the earth work all at once if you can afford it, but those trees can go in as you can afford them.

Tx, Carol. I cannot do all of the earthworks at the same time. The plan is to start with the more egregious problems (caused by moi, of course). I hope to plant/cover each berm right away. I have all those wonderful cover seeds you mention and more. It's like the universe was gearing up for this project, but I didn't know it. :)

The contour and grading is all over the place. I hope It'll make sense after I get some type of grading plan to look at that includes areas surrounding the property from whence the stormwater run off begins.

Bon, Do you mean that you are wanting to essentially plant a forest garden? And, if so, are you only interested in edible plants that provide a harvest for humans, or do you want a mixed planting that will provide not only for the humans but also for the wildlife. I don't want to go off on a tangent about what you could grow for wildlife if you're only focused on growing for human consumption.

Dawn

Dawn, I've been back reading a lot of the old posts. I guess the decision is something that will evolve. It's more of a learning process than an ultimate decision while I seemingly grasp for knowledge I dont' yet have. Maybe I have it and don't trust myself. I've been really pondering that lately.

I want sustainability for all those you mention. Good lord, I don't want any more animals, but that's just part and parcel for a good ecology. The established animals means it's a great environment to build upon.

I get so lost in overthinking. lol

On some things I am confused because I just need to READ and LEARN. Where someone mentions "fruit trees" I'm thinking they are also including nut-bearing trees where others may not be thinking the same. With the exception of juglone, I haven't a clue what trees like to be together.

Each tree will be guilded, as in permaculture. I'll plant what each tree likes for its root zone and also the bushes and ground cover. I'd prefer as much fruit-bearing as possible. Lordy, I have plenty of briar (which I think is a sign of health, though it's annoying), honeysuckle, english ivy that got away and more for natural ground over but none produce edibles for humans. These things already are pushing the envelope. they're crying "Let us go!" so they can shade, filter and grab onto great soil. I hope to change up the varieties and plant in fruit-bearing, instead. Sometimes I think maybe, just maybe, I need to let those go in those spots and let them do their thing BEFORE I wipe them out and introduce other varieties.

Like the mulberries. Where did these come from? They sprang up as soon as I started thinking of "healing" the land and letting weeds grow into help establish the soils. Instead of fighting them, I'm now looking at what these mulberries are trying to do. Why is the land giving way to mulberries instead of pecan? Of course, I don't want a bunch of mulberries! Heck, I even fight the poplar trees off the neighbor's lots because they haven't a clue. But the land is yearning. I believe it's my job to give it what it wants (on my lot). Meanwhile, I hope to have some production plants that the birds can eat, plants the coons can enjoy, vines all over the fence lines, soft rich ground where the skunks can dig (even tho I abhor them). The skunks really enjoyed my gardening efforts and digging under the mulch. I want places the owls can rest and nest - to establish a living and breathing environment that all these can continue when the neighbors or the city decide to clear the thicket on the lot nearby. I know they will do that, it's only a matter of time.

Underneath, the roots from all this growth will slow down and filter thousands of gallons of drinking water that drains into the storm water below. To think that this work could enhance the lives of the entire community is pretty awesome. Yet, they'll probably not test it and continue to dump chlorine into the water. lol

Right now a woodpecker is destined to build in the old pecan tree that we're going to take down, poor thing. I'd like to see an area where those trees can die out naturally and do their thing. But it's a comparatively small area. Then again, so is the thicket nearby! Much of the woodpecker's work has already fallen off. Unfortunately, it was close to the house, so I had to move that log with his bored hole into the brush pile. Life is already abundant here. It just needs a nudge and places to live.

Having goji berries, plums, figs, grapes, citrus (?), for us would be splendid. Or, rather, I should say having all these for my kids. But for these to grow well, I realize the trees need to come first, enriching the soil by providing dappled shade and slowing the moisture. Then, the fruit trees can come. I need to decide because I must learn about each individual tree.

I really wish I was younger. Then, I could take more chances and wing it, but that's not the case. I feel I need to act quickly and decisively. Of course, I love every bit of it. <3

Bon, My part of OK differs slightly from yours. I am in the ecoregion of OK known as the Cross TImbers, and Payne County has a little of the Cross TImbers in it and the rest of it is something else. I think my part of the Cross Timbers might vary a little from yours, but when I look at succession forests in my area, here's what happens when someone stops farming and lets the land revert to nature.

First, the so-called trash trees (quick-growing but also relatively quick to die compared to many higher-quality hardwoods) sprout. There are many, many different kinds that you'll see. Along fencelines, they often sprout from seeds planted by birds, and often get a head start on trees that sprout in the middle of fields because they often are too close to the fence for anyone to cut them down with a brush hog. In our area, these fenceline trees often are fruiting (hence the planting by the birds) and include thicket plums, Mexican plums, roughleaf dogwood, redbuds, honey locust, several kinds of elms, a couple of kinds of ash, hackberry, persimmons, eastern red cedars (unfortunately, and I cut them down as soon as I notice them), a couple of kinds of ash trees, Kentucky coffee trees, 2 or 3 kinds of sumacs, and occasionally wild blackberries.

Among those trees, at least the ones that gain height (thicket plums and sumacs don't get really tall down here), many will eventually serve as nurse trees for other types of trees. Eventually, you'll notice that various oaks (down here we have a lot of post oaks, bur oaks and red oaks), native pecans, black walnuts and various types of hickories sprouting and growing. Some of these young trees eventually will either outgrow or outlast the trash trees (remember, those early trees lean towards being more short-lived), especially the pecans and hickories. These eventually will become your tallest and most dominant trees, although some elms can last 30 or more years. Our elms that are in their 40s and 50s are slowly coming down, bit by bit, as they age out, become diseased and die. We still have some hackberries on the edges of the woods, but the ones that are more in the interior have largely died after finally being shaded out by the oaks, hickories and pecans.

As your hickory, pecan and oak trees gain height, a whole new bunch of shade-loving understory plants will sprout. These will include trees, shrubs, vines, berries and herbaceous perennials/grasses that seem to prefer various degrees of shade. For example, growing as understory plants in our woodland we have a lot of wild cherries, some woolly buckthorn, Mexican plums, prickly pear cacti (on edges of the woodland where they get some sunshine), Virginia creeper, poison ivy, greenbrier, river oats grass, various forms of sedges, at least one fern (Ebony Spleenwort), tons of American Beautyberry, Gregg's Mist (on dappled creek banks), rusty blackhaw viburnums, and, on the sunny (often east-facing) edges of woodland areas, tons of persimmons that eventually form little groves. Often on the east side of woodland areas or in clearings that have at least dappled shade, we have wild blackberries, often called dewberries because they creep and crawl across the forest floor and don't really get upright like cultivated forms of blackberries. On the southern edge of woodland areas we have a lot of possumhaw hollies, which are a native, deciduous holly that produce red and reddish-orange berries that often hang on the hollies all winter. The berries are so sour that nothing much eats them until spring, after repeated freeze-thaw cycles have softened them and, perhaps, made their flavor a little less astringent. Lots of song birds are busy in those trees in late winter and early spring, and cedar waxwings, in particular, feed on them while migrating north. By then, the berries often have fermented, so the birds get a little tipsy and act ridiculous at times.

I hope this description of how farmland here reverts to a mixed oak-hickory-pecan forest over several decades helps you to picture how your beds can progress over time. There are, of course, many other plants in addition to the ones I named. We have probably at least 20 different kinds of native prairie grasses that sprout and grow in unforested areas and also just in clearings in the woodland after a couple of big old elm trees come down.

You can create your own mini-forest and it will progress fairly quickly. After we built our house here in 1999, we dug up tiny oak saplings from the woodland and planted them in the yard areas around the house. When I say tiny, I mean they had maybe 8-15" of root (we dug really deep to get all of the taproot that we could) and maybe 8-12" of topgrowth above ground. We chose tiny trees on purpose. I had read some of Andy and Sally Wasowski's book on landscaping with native plants and in one book, they mentioned that research showed tiny trees that had as much root growth as top growth would, when planted or transplanted, grow more quickly than larger purchased trees that had 5-10-20 gallons of rootball compared to a whole lot larger top growth area. I decided to test their theory. We dug and transplanted about two dozen oaks. (Always plant more tiny trees that you ultimately want, because disease, bunnies, deer, etc. will get some of them.) The ones that survived are now taller than the one native post oak in our front yard that stood alone in the front yard when we built the house, and are vying with the older pecan tree that sits further from the house and close to the front garden. That pecan tree probably is 40-50 years old. I am pleased at how quickly the tiny trees grew, and I know that it happened because they never had to struggle to support topgrowth that was huge compared to the amount of root growth. Those tiny trees grew well because they were in equilibrium. In the first 5 or 6 years, I wondered if it was a mistake to start with tiny trees, but once their root systems were well-established, they went into much faster growth, despite many years of drought.

Because we have squirrels, once the little oaks were growing, we had other trees sprout underneath them, notably pecans, but also other oaks and, of course, the birds planted mulberries (which I removed because they were closer to the house than I liked). Sumac popped up. Virginia creeper. Indian currants. And so it goes.....your landscape will grow and develop on its own as plants mysteriously pop up out of nowhere, and all you have to do is remove what you don't want and let the rest remain. I also planted fruit trees in areas where, at the time I planted, they were much taller than the tiny trees. Now the fruit trees are about 15 years old and are beginning to get shaded out by the oaks and pecans that have outgrown them, but I knew that would happen and a few years back I began planting other fruit trees out back where there isn't anything that will shade they out.

I find the ideal planting to be one that combines native plants and cultivated fruit and nut trees and berries. I try to leave enough natives to provide food for the wildlife while also including enough trees that will produce crops we can harvest for human consumption. I love my native pecan trees but they don't get maintained the way a pecan orchard would, and it shows. I just basically leave them alone. In the years there is a good crop, we collect some for ourselves and leave some for the wildlife. Might we get a better yield if we sprayed and fertilized them? Probably so, but as a homeowner, there's no easy way to spray trees that are 40-50' tall or taller, so I just don't worry about it.

You'll be amazed at how many edible plants will grow in the dappled shade of taller trees. Even though my plum and peach trees are heavily shaded now, they still produce tons of fruit, certainly much more than we can eat fresh, and such large harvests in some years that it is a struggle to preserve all of it before it goes bad. Blackberries, both native and cultivated, don't mind shade as much as I thought they would. Native grapes? I hate them. They are very tenacious and will grow up and through your trees and cover their canopy. I cut back grapes relentlessly, as we have many of them climbing up into trees that are 40-60' tall or taller. We have huge woody grapevines everywhere. The native grapes (there are different kinds in our woodland) are largely sour and astringent. Some people make wine from them. I don't know of anyone who makes jelly from them, though I suspect it could be done if you added tons and tons of sugar. I just leave them for the birds. I've been fighting a native grape that wants to grow on the entry arbor to our garden. I have relentlessly cut it back to the ground ever since the birds planted it and it first sprouted about 10 years ago. I think next year I'll just cut it back and treat it with brush killer because you can't get rid of it any other way. I've long resisted using herbicide anywhere near my garden, but I'm tired of that grapevine.

The prickly pear cacti were a revelation to me. I never thought of them as understory plants, but they are very happy on the edges of our woodland where they get dappled shade and, often, afternoon sun. Because they are mostly growing in clay, they'll die in periods of extreme drought, like in 2011, when we lost a lot that never came back (I had hoped they'd regrow from roots0. In the sandy soil, they don't die as easily in drought, and I assume that's because they can put down deeper, more vigorous roots than the dense clay allows.

I hope this helps. Think outside the box and don't be afraid to experiment. Your forest garden will tell you what it does or doesn't want to grow in any given spot. It is a wonderful adventure and can greatly complement your more structured edible crop garden, what the guys around here call row gardens or kitchen gardens.

Dawn

Yes! This is a delicious post to digest.

I see Wasowski has a lot of good books to read.

Any other recommendations?

chickencoupe, I'm probably the wrong one to ask because I simply don't care for a lot of trees, I tend toward prairie. Personally I think we have way too many trees in Oklahoma especially in residential areas so I'd be wanting to clear trees out more so than add.

I plant mainly drought hardy natives and grasses so all the suggestions below fall into that category and are self sustaining.

A small tree I do like and have is Chilopsis linearis aka Desert Willow (10 to 25ft). It blooms all summer, stays small and only casts light shade. Another is Caesalpinia aka Bird of Paradise (4 to 6ft).

Apache Plume is a good sized shrub from NM that is covered in fluffy feathers and single white rose-like flowers from spring to fall. Looks great in late afternoon light. Very drought hardy. Leucophyllum frucescens aka Texas Sage or Barometer Bush is a large light blue shrub that blooms on and off all summer when it rains or the humidity is high.

Salvia greggi is a great small shrub that you can mass in. It will grow and bloom well in sun or shade, a surprising amount of shade in fact. I am using them like mad in dry shade to good effect.

Nolina microcarpa aka Texas Beargrass is an interesting 'needs no watering' shrub sized plant that forms a large grasslike plant with curly tops. I've got several because it repeats a shape I like, meaning plants that form a semicircle of spikes. Curl Leaf Yucca and Yucca Rostrata are both soft friendly yuccas and add nice visual interest.

Silver. I can't live without the contrast and large sized areas of color you can get with silver plants. Good choices are Silver King or 'Valerie Finis' Artemisia. A lot less bright, but good to fill a large dry sunny area is Powis Castle although in winter its a bit sad looking. A great low growing ground cover if you can find it is Dalea greggii, it blooms and attracts bees here in winter, I have one trying to eat my sidewalk but I let it because its like a blue waterfall. Local prairie sage works if you want something really aggressive. These need no blooms because they are always ornamental and bright. Fringed sage is another good native ground cover type but it really needs good drainage.

All the Muhlenbergia grasses are ornamental, tough and make wonderful shrub-sized specimen plants for very little cash IOW, a lot of bang for the buck.

I use a lot of hardy lantana's. Russian Sage looks fantastic alongside of the orange in lantana for a drought hardy pair of shrubs used as specimens and for long lasting summer color. Both of them really draw the butterflies and honey bees.

Another good tough one is Flame Acanthus which gets about 4ft tall and wide unless you trim it back in late spring. The hummingbirds love it (along with the Salvia greggi). Since its in the Acanthus family, like Tree of Heaven, its a very tough rooted plant, I know because I tried to dig one out last fall. I get volunteers because it shoots out seeds that explode from hard pods.

Okiedawn will call me a firebug (I'm beating her to the punch this time) but I like swaths of native grasses. For impact and low maintenance it cannot be beat. A bank of Little Bluestem backed by a bank of Switchgrass is just my kind of look. In front of the bluestem you could do a mass area of blue grama for a light golden contrast giving you a lot of ornamental impact of different heights and colors from layering. A buffalo grass lawn would be nice. I'm seeing all native grass gardens a lot here in the city around government buildings and elsewhere, professionally planned and planted in mass and its stunning. Large grass gardens are being installed to celebrate our state, they are very low maintenance as well which is long overdue. Seems we finally got wise about what we plant around here and decided Oklahoma has something to offer besides the imported generic look of Home Depot. If you want a landscape to look like Oklahoma this will certainly do the job and its wonderful to see them swaying in the wind. Native grasses are very hot in the nursery trades currently and we have them in abundance. There are types of switchgrass being sold under names such as Panicum 'Northwind' and several types of Little Bluestem sold under various names that have been selected for color, upright habit etc. They are better in a garden situation than the local genotypes in my opinion.

What grows wild along the roadside can work in very ornamental ways into organized garden plans that look well maintained, fresh and artistic. A bank of Maximillian Sunflowers close by for instance would be a welcome sight in fall. Large rocks are especially nice mixed in with native landscaping.

Add some pink hesperaloe aka 'Pink Yucca' to the mix by the grasses and you have a self sustaining mass of plants that will require no help from you. Otherwise, I suggest rudbeckia, coneflowers, liatris, purple prairie clover....the list of garden worthy ornamental natives is endless.

Well, I could go on an on with different native plants, inspiring ideas can be found in books by John Greenlee and Sally Wasowski. They both work with native plants and offer many ideas to show what it possible. Once you get hooked in this direction there really is no turning back. I can still remember the days of wasting water and fighting our Oklahoma weather but I'm freed from doing that now. I used to not pay any attention but now I look at whats growing on the roadside with much interest and appreciation, the possibilities are endless.

That's a great start, Tex. You probably don't realize this but you've made a HUGE impact on my thinking as far as grassy areas, aesthetic features involving different types of textures, especially native.

From watching the native growth, I'm not going to get ANY trees to remain in the highly sunned plain areas. Grasses will help contain the soil until the tree line begins to envelope. I even tried the desert Willow. Didn't make it. Plus, the grasses can be cut and dropped or used in the compost or even fed to the bunnies. But much of it will remain dry as a bone until later.

Since it's all progressive, I get to try out different plots and varieties. I'm really looking forward to that part.

Thanks for the bookmarked varieties to check out.

chickencoupe, I just got my order in for 9 Big Bluestem 'Red October' from Santa rosa Gardens, which is a great place to buy grasses. 4" pots do better than the more expensive gallon sized plants I discovered. I bought their last plant last fall and its burgundy red currently, later it will be a stiff vertical statement of screaming red in color. I also ordered 3 'Thin Man' Indian Grass plants that came yesterday from High Country Gardens. Hey, man, I mean, thats our state grass guys and I'm thinking we ought to be having more of them growing around the city. Ever notice how blue they are on the sides of the road? These look like thin powder blue exclamation marks in the catalog. I'm hoping they look like that in my yard. It ain't your yucky imported Miscathus grass thats for sure. I'm so tired of seeing Miscanthus everywhere.

We are up on OSU ag country and all I see is frickin' Johnson grass. In the spring there is a lot of things growing on the roadside that have been intentionally planted, but hardly any grass other than Johnson grass and bermuda. It will be nice to see some planted in my yard!

Oh my.


Mexican Bird of Paradise

is really beautiful and would fill in blank spots VERY nicely.

Tex, I won't call you a firebug (never, ever, ever) , but if I ever attempted to plant that sort of landscaping here in the midst of thousands of acres of prairie/mixed woodland that are all too often dry and prone to wildfire, my DH would call me one. : )

If we were ever to move back to a city type situation (we won't, barring some medical thing so drastic that it made rural living impossible), I'd have prairie landscaping in a heartbeat! I do love it.

Bon,

One of my favorite authors on the topic of native landscaping is the late Sara Stein. Her books "Noah's Garden" and "Planting Noah's Garden" are what opened my eyes (in addition to all the books by the Wasowskis) to the idea of planting with native plants. She helped me learn to embrace the beauty in the plants that grow here naturally instead of bringing in tons of plants that originated in foreign lands. She was ahead of her time in her efforts to spread the word about using hardy, well-adapted native plants instead of importing exotic ones from foreign lands and then being frustrated because they wouldn't grow.

My favorite Wasowski book is from the late 1980s and is called 'Native Texas Plants: Landscaping Region By Region". I used it a lot when we first moved here to help me figure out what was growing here, and whether it was worth keeping or not.

I also like "Texas Wildscapes: Gardens For Wildlife, Texas A&M Nature Guides Edition". I used it to figure out what all our existing native plants fed or sheltered, so I wouldn't accidentally remove plants that wildlife relied upon. I'm so close to Texas that the Texas books are what I find in stores and they work fine for me. I'm not sure what the Oklahoma equivalents of these books would be, but my experience has been that most of what grows in Texas in zones 7 and 6 also grow here in OK.

One of my favorite permaculture books is the second edition of "Gaia's Garden: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture by Tobey Hemenway.

Our first couple of years that we owned our land here (both before we built the house and also well afterwards), I wandered our property (probably with less respect for the plentiful population of venomous snakes than I have now) endlessly, notebooks and field guides to various kinds of plants in hand, just studying and identifying what we had and figuring out how each plant fit into the ecosystem. I didn't want to come in and ruthlessly bulldoze a home site and destroy all the existing plant life. In the end, we had to cut down a few elm trees and a lot of greenbrier and similar brush, but we were able to locate the house in a spot where we could save the one post oak. a woolly buckthorn and several pecan trees that already existed there. By understanding what we had and what sort of conditions those specific plants needed to thrive, I then could figure out what else I could plant that would peacefully co-exist in the same conditions. So, watch the patches of woodland around you, and the fence lines where plants that are planted by the wind, the rain and the birds and other wildlife just seem to pop up out of the ground. Learning what you already have around you will help you understand what you can bring to the table with new plantings that complement the existing plantings. Or, just wait and watch and see what Mother Nature plants for you.

Everything you plant will not thrive. That's the way of the world. Lots of trial and error is involved, but it is a life-long process you'll never tire of.

Dawn

Bon, I'm surprised Desert Willow didn't do well for you. I hope you'll give it a second chance one of these days. It needs well-drained soil but mine has lived in horrid red clay that is dense and poorly drained for about 12-15 years now! The one I have in sandier soil is making faster growth though.

Remember that any new planting of anything will need regular watering for 1-3 years to help get it established. After my plantings are 3 years old, I generally don't water them at all.

Dawn

Dawn, I don't think I handled it or cared for it sufficiently, or something. Live and learn. I think Desert Willow would be a nice addition. I would like to try it again.

tex, the colors and textures on all these you mention are fabulous. do you remember making suggestions for my fence line some time last year or so?

I have about 5 times as much fence line to play with. :D Almost all of them need erosion control.

Looks like Mexican Bird of Paradise is a legume so that's a plus. In addition to just letting native plants grow, learn a lesson from them. For instance, if wild amaranth grows everywhere, then the grain amaranth and the ornamental types probably will also. If you have crab apples, try apples, etc.

Another source for information is the Oklahoma Forestry Service website, but for some reason it is only useful during the months you can order trees. They have a map that divides Oklahoma into areas and it tells you which trees do well in which areas. Most things only come in bundles of 50 which may be too much for your area, but it worked great for my son'ts place. We needed windbreak, erosion control, and wildlife habitat, blooms, etc., so it was perfect for us. Of course, some of them also provide food for humans as well. We were working in a large area and we used two kinds of plums, native pecans, service berries, mulberries, black locust, redbuds and 2 types of evergreen, one of which almost all died, and probably some I am forgetting. We wanted persimmon, but they were sold out when I ordered. The seedlings are very small, but the price is very, very inexpensive. This winter they will post a list of everything they will have for sale. You order in the winter and they notify you when they are available in the Spring.

We also planted 25-30 grafted fruit trees. In addition, he has started lots of other nuts, berries, and fruits that he is still growing in containers until they are large enough to plant out. He doesn't like gardening, but he loves trees. LOL

Tex, I'm reminded that there was a beautiful smoke tree here when we moved in. Of course, I was clueless and let the dog whiz all over it. I recall it was so beautiful when the foliage turned purple.

That forest pansy is a beautiful diversion from the regular or Eastern Redbud with normal green foliage. I gotta keep this one in mind! I was hoping to do a yellow forsythia next to a redbud for spring contrast. :)

I picked up some winged sumac seeds from a local wild plant. I want this one for erosion control (filler) and also the fruits for seasoning. Just love this one. Yet, the seeds require much work, so I'm not sure if I'll get any started.

The ninebark is way interesting and when I looked, I couldn't take my eye off the Dart's Gold. I can see why you're disappointed in the no show for the coppertina. He needs to be replanted to show off his gory! These plants are beautiful. I'm especially interested in that bark.

Carol, that is a massive amount of trees! I'm glad to hear this. hehe Still, that's a ton of trees!

I finally noticed amaranth growing. Like everything else, it likes the dappled shade from the trees. Everywhere else is just too dry.

Bon, I laughed at your comment about the amaranth and about it being so dry. How dry is it here? The amaranth and, especially, the lambs quarters are withering and dying, and so is the bindweed that has crept into the garden since I abandoned it to the heat and drought in early September. Yay! The only good thing about drought is that it even kills some of the pernicious weeds.

Dawn

Forest Pansy redbud does best in shade with just morning sun. Afternoon sun scorches the leaves. It doesn't form seeds either, some redbuds are worse than others for looking tacky with seeds, I've notice there is a lot of difference from one tree to the next. The ones that get covered thick in them really thick look unattractive to me. I used to have one in my courtyard, I purchased it from the now gone Cooper's Nursery. It got afternoon sun in there and it made the leaves get bronzy and burnt on the edges. There is one up the street planted under trees, its really pretty all summer.

Another attractive ornamental small tree for understory is Washington Hawthorne. There are three in the park up the street and they are solid red in fall. The old Cox Cable offices used to have them in front of the building on the north side, thats where I first saw them, the branches were covered and nearly solid red with berries.

Yeah, Dawn. I cannot complain. lol All the latest storms and showers have hit us this year. Strange, really.

Tex, I should do both types of redbuds. Why not, right?

I almost talked myself into black locust, today.

It should be noted that most of the "invasive" mulberries are introduced exotic white mulberries or white/red hybrids. The native red mulberry is fairly rare and not prone to spread like the white. Red mulberry is usually found in the forests of the Eastern half of Oklahoma. Along fence lines where more trees would be welcome would be the only place I would worry about seedlings. On account of the birds. They don't spread by suckers or by wind like the Chinese Elm seedlings that are my primary invader here in OKC. I have mulberries growing wild in the area that never have any starts on my property; but, the Lacebarks pop up everywhere.