Every landscape needs that statement piece – the tree, statue, or water feature that draws the eye and sets the stage for the rest of the landscape design. In terms of natural landscape design, a large flowering plant is perfect for taking the beauty of nature and using it as a statement piece, anchoring your whole design on a beautiful piece of your landscape. A few of these large flowering plants you can use to turn your landscape design into a statement are:
- Tulip Tree (Liriodendron) – The Tulip Tree, or Liriodendron, is a striking flowering deciduous tree growing to dizzying heights of over 165 feet in natural Appalachian coves with good growing conditions. In your landscape design your Tulip Tree may not grow quite that high, but you can expect a large tree with distinct beautiful flowers. The unique flowers of the Tulip Tree look similar to large tulips with colors of bright yellow, orange, and light green, sticking upwards in a cup-like formation to really bring an eye-catching aesthetic.
- Tea Olive Tree (Osmanthus fragrans) – The Tea Olive Tree, or Osmanthus fragrans, is a small tree or large shrub native to Asia and used in several different Asian cultures for medicinal purposes and teas. Clusters of small flowers in white, yellow, or orange emit a pleasant and fresh fragrance comparable to ripe peaches, bringing an inviting scent and beauty to your landscape. For smaller landscapes, this smaller tree grows only to between around 9 and 30 feet.
- Dogwood (Cornus) – The Dogwood Tree, or Cornus, actually encompasses around 30 to 60 different wooded species in the Cornaceae family. A tree that can really range in size depending on the chosen species, it blooms with large white flowers typically made of 4 petals, showing a striking clean and full appearance in the spring and summer. The Dogwood Tree also grows sweet berries that, while toxic to humans, are very attractive to many species of bird, creating a delightful experience for any birdwatching enthusiasts in your home.
Lighting Your Large Flowering Plants For Nighttime Landscape Design
With your Dogwood Tree, Tea Olive Tree, Tulip Tree, or other large flowering plant acting as an aesthetic anchor to your landscape design, you’ll want to keep the focus on it while the sun goes down as well. Using cross-lighting or under lighting, you can keep your focal point and bring it out even better at night, creating a striking design element with only the simple addition of a couple of lights.
With cross lighting, two lights will be used facing each other, creating crossed beams that point together at a specific focal point, which in this case is your large flowering plant. While this effect won’t provide a very dramatic effect on a larger tree like a Dogwood or Tulip Tree unless also pointed upward, it does have a great look on a smaller plant like a small Tea Olive Tree as it provides a beautiful glow from both sides.
Under lighting creates a distinct drama that looks beautiful when accompanying larger flowering trees, bringing a glow to the flowers from underneath and bringing a certain ethereal feel. For particularly large trees, using 2 or 3 lights underneath the tree can help to bring those light touches to wider spread branches, and really show the size of the tree in a dreamy way.
2017 Landscape Design Trends And Your Large Flowering Plants
Large flowering plants and trees really fit into the top 2017 landscape design theme of going natural. When accompanied by groundcover, shrubs, and native perennial flowers, you create the look of a beautiful and serene natural meadow right in your own property, with much less work than other landscape design trends. The big secret to pulling off the natural design trend is allowing your plants to go their own way a little bit, and embracing natural focal points like large flowering plants, vines, ornamental grasses, and flowering groundcover, over clean lines or man-made landscape elements.
Your landscape design vision is yours, and whether you want to go on-trend or with something a little more unique, your landscape is the natural sanctuary you are creating. With our landscape professionals, turning just about any landscape dream into a reality is possible.
