Living Art – Japanese Maples

 Japanese Maples are a great addition to the landscape and nearly all the yards you look at have one or more included in the garden beds. The most common one seen is the red lace-leaf type growing as a huge mounded red shrub.  Maybe you’ve seen some of the taller growing types as well on walks and drives or maybe you have one or more of these little maples in your own garden. These trees are natural stars and make a great focal point.

The taller growing upright varieties look great in landscape beds as a single specimen, grabbing the limelight easily. Smaller growing lace leaf types make great colorful attention grabbers in the smaller garden beds by a path or entry.

I polled about 15 ladies, at a gathering I was at today, and all but one of them had a Japanese Maple in the yard and most had more than one.  You see it’s hard to stop collecting once you start because there is such a diverse assortment to choose from and the leaf shapes and colors are so exciting. I count only three in my gardens here now but I know this year at least three more are coming to live with me. A Coral Bark or Sango Kaku Maple, an Orangeola lace-leaf Maple and maybe a variegated Butterfly Maple.  

I have the perfect soil for them here; it’s sandy and drains really well.  Japanese Maples do not like wet soggy soil at all so with the rains we get here in the Puget Sound you need to address the drainage and make sure it’s very good. If you have heavy soil you could always mound additional soil into a raised planting area with a good quality well draining garden soil mix.

Another great solution, if your garden soil is too heavy, is to grow Japanese Maples in large frost proof ceramic containers. This way you can bring the focal point up higher in the garden, giving it even more of a visual punch. I know a number of people that grow multiple Japanese maples in large ceramic pots with great success. The soil mix and a good quality large pot is the secret. Our soil mix we recommend to use, for container growing trees,  is #1 Nursery Mix. It’s the same soil we use for all our potted trees and shrubs and works super for any tree growing in containers. As well you could use this Nursery Mix in the garden for improving its soil quality.

 Watering the pots is easy if you rig up a drip system. Our friends, Will & Pat have theirs set for watering everyday in the summer but their trees are a little older now and have lots of roots filling the pots. New plantings get watered when the soil on the top looks dry and it feels dry about a ½” down. Soak the root area thoroughly and then let them dry out a little bit in between.

When to prune Japanese Maples?  Summer is best; dry sunny summer pruning will mean you can see everything you are cutting off and the cuts will heal more quickly. In the wet winter or spring weather there is a better chance of the bacteria pseudomonas getting into the open cut as it doesn’t heal so quickly.

Fertilizing these Maples is super easy if you use the organic Happy Frog Japanese Maple Fertilizer. Applying this fertilizer monthly during the growing season, this formula actually helps them to develop a better, more brilliant color and can even help to keep them from getting scorched leaves in hot summer sun. Feeding them with quicker formula nitrogen sets up the leaves for a royal scorching come a hot sunny summer day. The other cool thing about Happy Frog Japanese Maple fertilizer is the addition of 20 species of beneficial microbes that help the plant convert the fertilizer into vital plant food and fight off disease.

I absolutely love Japanese maples and I’d like to share with you a few of my favorite varieties here. It was very hard to pick just a few but I promised I’d keep the list to the six highlighted below. We’ll see how it goes…

Coral Bark or Sango Kaku – (means coral tower)  This spectacular upright tree shows off its coral red bark all summer long. The new spring leaves are a bright gold-green with distinct red margins around each leaf; really quite striking against the bright red stems. Summer color foliage is bright lime gold-green and fall colors can be quite a showy red-orange but the real performance is in the winter. The leaves shed revealing the brilliantly intense coral-red bark and stems. This stunningly attractive tree grows to around 20-25’ tall eventually, over 20 years, by 15’ wide.  Coral Bark maples are very desirable in pots or in the garden itself and makes a super specimen or focal point in the landscape.

Orangeola –  One of the best of the ‘cascading’ types of little lace-leafs. The growth doesn’t mound, it definitely cascades or sweeps gracefully. Absolutely my favorite lace-leaf! The deeply dissected foliage is really quite different than other lace leafs in that the base of each dissected lobe is super skinny, barely wider than the midrib vein itself.  The lacy cut is just really pleasing to look at. The orange-red growth each spring is so bright & fresh and then as they mature the leaves manage to keep an orange blush going all summer which goes nicely with second flush of fresh red-orange leaves. A real two toned summer color show which bows with a finale of brilliant fiery orange-red fall color. This variety is smaller than most; growing no taller than 6’+ in 20 years, this is a very easy lace-leaf to keep much shorter.

Emperor l – You may have heard or read about an upright dark red Japanese maple called ‘Bloodgood’, thought by many to be the standard for the best upright dark red-leafed J. maple out there…now we have ‘Emperor l’, which is truly an outstanding competitor.  ‘Emperor l’ has darker red foliage and thinner leaves so the red will glow when the sun is shining through the foliage. The dark red color also holds very well into the summer heat while with many other varieties the red fades a bit into a reddish-green come summer. The leaves will even keep good color in the shade, unlike other reds that need more of the sun for its red display. I’ve also noticed the young trunk and branches are a rich dark burgundy color with white striations on the bark, a pretty added feature. The fall leaf color is a rich dark crimson red that holds well on the tree for display. This is a very hardy dark red upright growing variety eventually reaching around 20’+ in 20 years with a beautiful spreading crown.

Crimson Queen – If you have a red lace leaf maple in your garden most likely it’s a ‘Crimson Queen’ since they are the most popular lace leaf maples around these parts and maybe even the world! This variety can eventually grow to 9’ tall in 20 years. A shrub that deserves its reign as a Queen indeed; this is one variety with the ability to keep a persistent bright red color going strong on the leaves through the summer months. Many varieties of red lace leafs will come out red each spring but go green with a only a blush of red in the summer, much to the dismay of the adoptive parent that thought they were getting a red focal point or accent plant. Crimson Queen is a strong growing cultivar that originated in the US. It does us proud with the outstanding display of patriotic red colored  leaves.

Note on red leaf color– Just like our skin darkens in color, exposure to the sun will darken the red color on Japanese maples leaves. A few hours to ½ day may be enough but more sun will develop a deeper red on the leaves while shady areas grow leaves with a red-blushed green. And then there’s reflected heat off a house which is bad for these maples so don’t site against a south facing wall. Planted out a number of feet with the same sun exposure is safer than right next to a heat reflecting wall or fence.

Fireglow – A shorter version of an upright red leafed Japanese maple, reaching maybe up to 15’ in 30 years, makes this a perfect variety for container growing. Brilliant pink-red spring leaves turn into bright red summer leaves that hold good color throughout. Place this variety somewhere where the sun will backlight the leaves with a red glow like no other variety you’ll see.  The early fall foliage is bright purple-red finishing with a brighter red in later fall.  Known as an impressive and reliable variety, Fireglow would make a great addition to your landscape.

And finally, Japanese maple– Acer palmatum –  This is the natural seed grown planting stock of the hardy Japanese maple that grows wild in Japan, North & South Korea, China and eastern Mongolia to SE Russia. It’s anyone’s guess what your tree will turn out to be since it’s grown from a seed. The named varieties are cloned ,so we know what to expect, not so with seed; many different attributes can shine forth. The height is generally about 15-25’ tall in 25 years with a mushroom-like spreading crown. This makes a fantastic small shade tree near a deck or patio and are good candidates for container growing. In a natural setting these trees were usually an understory tree with spreading multiple trunks.  The fall color is usually a fabulous show with reds, oranges and purples in any combination.

The hardy Acer palmatum is the tough ‘understock’ that the named varieties are grafted onto. The varieties I listed above are all grafted onto Acer palmatum rootstock. You can usually see the joint at which the two varieties were grafted together; the lower trunk will be green and if a red variety is grafted on top it’s easy to see the union of the green to the dark burgundy stem. This grafting practice means if you see green leaves sprouting from lower down on the trunk of your red leafed maple, it’s the green leafed understock sprouting and you need to cut or grub out that growth with your thumbnail.

One of the gals was telling me today that she has a huge very old Red Lace leaf Japanese maple that has been lovingly pruned for many years by her hubby. The twists in the trunk and branching pattern is so dramatic now that they up-light the tree in the winter as a piece of living art. It’s her favorite tree in the garden and it lives front and center near her entry door.

 These beautiful trees are really very easy to grow and a well placed specimen can add hundreds if not thousands of dollars to the value of your home. They really are a natural star so make sure you site them where they can appeal to their audience best; in the spotlight. Start looking around your garden spaces to see where you can pop in one, two or even three (or more) of these beautiful shrubs or small trees.  You’ll love the addition and the addiction that starts the minute you adopt your first one.

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