Turning Shrubs Into Trees | Big Living in My Small Garden

Much of what reads as canopy in my garden started as a shrub. None of it was planned that way.

The Pittosporum tobira 'Tall and Tough' opens the video—and makes the point immediately. The tag says 6–8 feet. What's standing in the backyard seating area is closer to 12, planted in a raised bed that adds another two feet of apparent height. It's the canopy of that entire space. And when it blooms in spring, the fragrance is enough to practically drive you out of the yard.

The Golden Spirit smokebush (Cotinus coggygria 'Ancot') has been in this garden longer than the retaining wall behind it. When the wall went in, it could have come out—but it was big, central, and liked. So it stayed, wedged into a corner it was never meant to occupy, trained up as a tree ever since. The honest part: Cotinus are susceptible to verticillium wilt, and last year's dieback was concerning enough that it's currently in wait-and-see territory.

Two Scheffleras tell different stories. The Schefflera taiwaniana 'Yuan Shan' moved into the upper canopy relatively quickly—photos in the video show how fast it established from a small start. The Schefflera delavayi is the aspirational one: admired in friends' gardens where it develops a light, open canopy like an umbrella over a seating area, still in progress here. Slower to establish, placement tricky, but shade tolerant enough that there's reason to keep trying.

The Calycanthus floridus 'Aphrodite' was the most asked-about plant when my garden was open recently. Trained into a multi-stem tree form, it creates a canopy of deep red flowers you walk under and look up into. It takes consistent work—Calycanthus wants to sucker and send up new growth from the base—but for now, it's the standout.

The Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) rounds out the honest accounting. Purchased already trained as a standard, not grown from scratch. It's earning its place—but it seeds more freely than advertised, and plants in containers are already waiting for that spot when the time comes.

This is the first video in the Big Living in My Small Garden series.