Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry a Good Small Tree for the Home Landscape

Three flowering trees blooming at the same as the magnolias are the Serviceberry Trees (Amelanchier); Flowering Pear (Pyrus) and Flowering Cherries (Prunus).
　
The flowers on these trees are not individually photogenic as perhaps the magnolia or dogwood flowers, but collectively on a tree branch these trees provide a great sight site in the landscape. The flowering serviceberries and pears all have white flowers whereas the cherries can be white, red, or pink and come in a greater variety of tree forms.

This blog and the following two blogs will be devoted to these three trees.
　
When employed in the garden center business and while taking courses at Ohio State’s Agricultural Institute, the serviceberry tree was being promoted as an alternative to the flowering dogwood. The serviceberry tree was an almost guaranteed spring bloomer, had small leaves, leafing and generally provided a good fall color.

Serviceberry species were so named as they were one of the earliest trees / shrubs  blooming in the mountains and their small white flowers could be used in funeral services when no other trees were in bloom.

Serviceberry trees could be maintained as a multi-stemmed tree or pruned to be a single trunk tree.
Because my customers wanted a guaranteed spring blooming tree, I promoted and used the tree in landscape designs. However, admittedly, I was soon to realize that not all serviceberry varieties would meet the needs equally in the home and commercial landscape and I now have some regrets on some of my recommendations.
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The variety of serviceberry tree that I would highly recommend would be the "Autumn Brilliance" Serviceberry (Amelanchier x grandiflora ‘Autumn Brilliance.’) This variety grows naturally as a multi-stemmed tree or can be easily maintained as a single stemmed tree. Autumn Brilliance has an almost guaranteed blooming period of white flowers, presents an airy silhouette in the landscape because of its small leaves, provides edible small berries for the birds, and has a reliable great orange-red-yellow fall color.


In Akron, Ohio, some of the streets have been lined with single trunk Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry trees for their very effective spring, summer, and fall coloration. Because of the tree’s small leaves and berries cleaned up by the birds or just shriveling up on the branches, the tree is not a messy tree in the home or commercial landscape.