Best Flowering Shade Trees

There is no reason you have to compromise and pick a shade tree or flowering tree when you can have both in one tree. There are many great flowering shade trees that give you and your home shade, while also offering beauty, blooms, and color. You CAN have the best of both worlds by choosing a flowering tree that provides shade!

Dogwoods, Crape Myrtles, Redbuds, and Flowering Pear, Cherry, and Crabapple trees are excellent options. To simplify things for you, we have compiled a list of our favorite flowering shade trees. Our top picks are all low maintenance.

1.Tulip Poplar

Mature Size: 60 feet tall and 30 to 40 wide.

Growing Zones: 4 - 9

Liriodendron tulipifera is known by many names including tuliptree, fiddletree, and yellow poplar. This tree is large, strong, and very fast growing. It has pretty tulip-like blooms that are green, yellow, and orange. These are the flowering shade trees for you if you have a lot of space!

2. Cleveland Pear Tree

Mature Size: 30 feet tall, 15 feet wide

Growing Zones: 5 - 9

Beautiful white blooms in a no maintenance tree; what more could you ask for? The Cleveland Pear Tree has a much stronger branch structure than its cousin the Bradford Pear tree so you won’t have problems with splitting and broken branches.

3. Eastern Redbud Tree

Mature Size: 30 feet tall and wide

Growing Zones: 4 - 9

Delicate purple blooms coat this head-turning tree in early spring. As the flowers begin to fade, lovely, heart-shaped leaves emerge. The Eastern Redbud is the fastest growing redbud. These flowering shade trees are resistant to disease and storm, ice, and wind damage.

4. Muskogee Crape Myrtle

Mature Size: 30 feet tall and 20 feet wide

Growing Zones: 7 - 10

The Muskogee Crape Myrtle offers loads of light purple blooms for 4 months! It is also incredibly fast growing and drought tolerant. These beauties pack a big punch in the landscape and make amazing flowering shade trees!

5. Natchez Crape Myrtle

Mature Size: 30 feet tall and 20 feet wide

Growing Zones: 7 - 10

The Natchez Crape Myrtle explodes with fireworks of white flowers in late June and continues blooming all the way to October. This Crape Myrtle grows up to 5 feet per year and tolerates heat, humidity and drought.

6. Pink Mimosa Tree

Mature Size: 30 feet tall and 30 feet wide

Growing Zones: 6 - 10

If you want something truly unique the Pink Mimosa is the tree for you! The distinctive fluffy pink flowers bloom from late spring into summer. The Mimosa tree, also known as the Persian Silk tree, grows quickly, from 2 to 5 feet per year. Disease and deer resistant as well as drought, heat, frost, and humidity tolerant, Mimosas are some hardy flowering shade trees!

7. Profusion Crabapple

Mature Size: 20 feet tall, 15 to 25 feet wide

Growing Zones: 4 - 8

This flowering tree boasts a profusion of showy, pink blooms in spring. The Profusion Crabapple is a beautifully shaped tree that fits in small yards. An added bonus is that this flowering crabapple tree pollinates your fruiting apple tree, giving you more and better quality fruit!

8. Red Dogwood Tree

Mature Size: 20 to 30 feet tall and wide

Growing Zones: 5 - 9

Dogwoods aren’t just understory trees. Get them out in the full sun and you will see them shine as a flowering shade trees. We love the Red Dogwood for its fabulous rose red blooms that delight in early spring.

9. Yoshino Cherry Tree

Mature Size: 20 to 30 feet tall and wide

Growing Zones: 5 - 8

This early spring flowering tree is well known for its stunning white-pink blooms. The Yoshino Cherry Tree is a showy ornamental tree that is ideal for offering blooms AND shade in a small yard.

Tips From the Pros

Look for a flowering tree that matures to at least 20 feet tall if you want to shade a one story home. To shade a 2 story home you will want a tree that is at least 30 feet tall.
The larger the tree and the wider the spread the more shade you will get. But if you just need a small flowering tree to shade a bench by a garden you can open up your options to much smaller blooming trees.
Depending on the placement and function you desire, you may want to avoid trees like Redbuds and Crape Myrtles that have multiple trunks or low canopies.
There are many things to consider if you want to find the perfect tree, but fortunately there are a lot of choices when it comes to flowering shade trees.