Small Trees for Sale

Buy Small Trees for Sale Online

A small tree earns its spot faster than almost anything else you can plant. It shades a bench, softens a blank wall, or gives you a spring bloom you can see from the kitchen window, and it does all that without the root spread and pruning bills a full-size shade tree brings along. The trees in this collection mature anywhere between 8 and 30 feet, which keeps them in scale with a front yard bed, a patio corner, or a side yard you have been ignoring for three summers.

A small tree is generally any tree that matures under 25 feet. In this collection most fall between 8 and 25 feet, with the patio fruit trees and rose tree standards staying under 8 feet. Check the mature height listed on each product page, since the range across this collection is wide. This collection is made up of ornamentals! If you want a wider selection of compact producers, our dwarf fruit trees collection goes deeper.

Shop Small Trees by Type

Small Flowering Trees

This is the biggest group we carry, and magnolias are the workhorses. The Ann Magnolia holds around 10 feet by 10 feet at maturity and pushes deep pink, tulip-shaped blooms in early spring. It is cold hardy down to zone 4, which is unusual for a magnolia. Its sister variety, the Jane Magnolia, blooms a little later in spring, and that late timing is worth something. Late frosts are what ruin magnolia flowers, and Jane usually dodges them.

If you want evergreen, go with the Little Gem Magnolia. It is the compact form of the classic Southern Magnolia, holds glossy leaves year round with a rust-colored underside, and puts out fragrant white saucers from late spring into fall. It reaches 15 to 25 feet, so give it room.

Beyond magnolias:

• Dogwoods for layered horizontal branching and four seasons of interest. The White Kousa Dogwood blooms about a month later than native dogwoods and shrugs off anthracnose better.
• Flowering cherries for that short, spectacular spring show. Okame opens earlier than almost anything else in the yard.
• Crape myrtles for summer color when everything else has finished. Our crape myrtle trees include the Black Diamond series, which pairs bright bloom color against near-black foliage.
• Redbuds for purple foliage and early pink flowers on bare wood. The Forest Pansy Redbud holds burgundy leaves through summer heat better than most redbud selections.

Rose Trees

A rose tree is a rose grafted onto a straight standard, so you get bloom at eye level on a 3 to 4 foot trunk instead of down in a shrub. They anchor an entryway or flank a walkway beautifully, and they fit in a large container if you would rather not commit to a planting hole.

We carry rose standards in pink, red, and a softer blush, along with the Red Double Knock Out standard. All of them rebloom from spring through frost and were bred for disease resistance, which means you are not spraying for black spot every few weeks. One honest note from experience: rose trees need winter protection in colder zones because the graft union sits exposed up top. In zone 6 and below, plan on wrapping the trunk or moving a container indoors.

Small Evergreen Trees

Deciduous trees are gorgeous for six months and bare sticks for the other six. Evergreens are what you plant when the view needs covering year round.

The Fragrant Tea Olive is the one we recommend most often, and not just for the evergreen foliage. It reblooms from spring through fall with tiny flowers that smell like apricot and vanilla, strong enough to carry across a yard. You will smell it before you find it. It takes shearing well, so you can hold it at 10 feet or let it run taller.

The Windmill Palm is our pick for a tropical look in a climate that gets real winter. It handles cold into zone 7 and grows slowly enough that it reads as a small tree for many years, though it will eventually climb past 25 feet. For something more sculptural, the Torulosa Juniper twists as it grows into a naturally contorted, deer-resistant evergreen around 8 to 15 feet.

Small Trees for Fall Color

The Bloodgood Japanese Maple is the standard for a reason. Deep burgundy through summer, then scarlet in fall, on a tree that holds a graceful upright form at 15 to 20 feet. It wants afternoon shade in the South. Full blazing sun will scorch the leaf edges by August. Dogwoods and redbuds also turn well, so you can build a fall sequence without planting a single maple if you would rather not.

Why Gardener Buy Dwarf Trees from Perfect Plants

Every tree on this page is cared for and shipped by our own crew from our farm in Monticello, Florida. We have been at this since 1980. When your tree shows up, it has been handled start to finish by the same people who raised it, notsome random drop shipper! We take pride in every tree we ship to our gardeners.