My favorite small flowering tree is a serviceberry. They can be single stemmed or multi-stemmed.

Ours is slight abbreviated on the wall side because of the neighbor's bamboo and to keep them from doing any cutting. This one is obviously multi-stemmed.

Japanese maples are also nice.

Oh, that's beautiful! I think those are sold locally, too!

For that small & wide, PG Hydrangea is first thing that comes to mind.

I have both serviceberry (A. laevis) and PG Hydrangea and in my yard, the serviceberry is wider and taller than the hydrangea, and gives dappled shade, having smaller leaves. The hydrangea, of course, has the flowers that blow you away in the late-ish summer, while the serviceberry has the berries and the birds that love them. Tough call.

Are there lines overhead or other obstructions that requires a maximum height of 10’? How wide is “really wide?”

No one can guarantee a tree's mature height as the end result can be affected by climate, soil, and genetics. For instance, most flowering cherry trees have a broad crown, but some are tall and narrow, or weeping. Pay attention to growth descriptions on tags. If there is not enough info on the tag, do a search online. Their height averages from 12 to 15 feet, and remember these will have branches low enough to cause one to bend, especially when small. A dwarf cherry averages 8 to 10 feet high, and will have less space below its lowest limbs. Even if the space beneath your tree is all garden you still have to access it. Here is a good list of small trees and their dwarf versions, when available.

maackie, 'really wide' = as wide as possible. I want to start a big shade garden beneath it so the bigger the canopy, the better! No obstructions.

Mindshift, thanks, I will look at that list. I've also been interested in crab apple trees, which seem to be popular here and have a wide canopy.

big city name would help... z6 is pretty diverse ...

any tree that stays under 10 feet.. will take forever to get to ten feet ...

anything fast to such.. will probably shoot right past it ... trees never really stop growing at some magical height ....

this is why shrubs trained as trees are being suggested ...

how about a pic of the spot .. it might help us.. help you ...

if you can do with a bit more height.. redbud might fit the bill ...

regardless.. we are talking tree/shrub time ... if you plant one of anything.. im thinking its going to be 5 to 10 years before you have your shade garden ...

do watch out for anything with berries.. that might self sow into your future garden ...

ken

Young serviceberry in forest understory near me:

10' is barely even in the tree category!! You will have a hard time finding anything tree-like with that size limitation and with a wide spreading canopy. Even the serviceberries, generally considered a small scaled tree, will get taller than that.

I think that to get the canopy spread you are looking for to establish a shade garden, you will need to revise your height limitations. If you do that, then certain ornamental crabs ( Cardinal, Donald Wyman, Indian Magic, Red Jade, Sargentii) produce low spreading canopies. Cornus kousa var. chinensis also produces a very broad canopy in comparison to height. Various Japanese maples would work as well, although you really want to limit the underplanting involved with them due to issues with root disturbance.

Instead of trying to find a single tree that will be shrub height yet provide a large pool of shade - and be one that you can walk around under, at the same time that it is only 10' tall - choose one or more small shrubby kinds with more usual a shape and make a grouping of those. So that you have a mini woodland.

This will also work better for producing shade relatively quickly than a single specimen. Even then you will have to wait some years for them to size up enough to start producing the desired effect.

These are all very good tips...thank you! I'll look up these trees/shrubs and get to work!

Maybe in November you can go dig this one up and drive it back to your place.

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5926094/tree-identification-please#n=2

Here's our Japanese Maple ... depending on whether there are restricting factors (like wires), they take a long time to get this big, and a different variety might be even slower.

This tree is about 40 years old and about 25' tall now. It was planted when it was about two feet tall, and it grew. It has been professionally pruned to take the weight off the ends to prevent breakage.

The black fence behind is 3' tall:

This is technically under the cedar tree, but it could have been under the maple tree had we planted this differently. English ginger in the front left and rear left, hosta to the right of the toad house, weeds slated for removal in the front right, and columbine coming over from the rear bed of the fenced garden in the way back.