I have always like flowering crabapples. Four of them grew in the back garden of the home in which I grew from child to man. I was, however, in my forties before I was introduced to the crabapple I still love most.
The moment I saw it I was reminded of the opening to the introduction to The Collector's Garden by Ken Druse. He said, "If it's rare, we want it. If it's tiny and impossible to grow, we've got to have it. If its brown, looks dead, and has black flowers, we'll kill for it."
Sargent's Crabapple, now known as a subspecies of Japanese Crabapple, is a stunningly beautiful, and wonderfully unique, small tree. It is the only Crabapple taxonomists still classify as a flowering shrub. It is the smallest of the Crabapples. That, of course, makes it a great candidate for small gardens. Sometimes reaching 8 feet in height, it can easily spread to 8-15 feet. It branches low to the ground and it is densely branched and foliaged. This naturally gives it the appearance of a plant an Oriental gardener had carefully shaped for a long time.

In May this small tree is literally covered with bright pink buds… that open to beautiful white blooms.


These, as the summer progresses, evolve into bright red, dime-sized Crabapples that persist on the tree into fall and winter… instead of dropping and making a mess of your lawn.

In fall, before defoliating, the leaves turn an excellent shade of yellow-gold.
Every review of it I have ever read says this tree is an "alternate bloomer"… meaning it only blooms prolifically every other spring. Perhaps it is only because I like it so much… but to me the bloom each spring has been more than sufficient to remind me of its beauty.
And it is a versatile little tree. One client espaliered one on a brick wall.

Another espaliered several in a row to create a visual division between two parts of his garden.

A third planted them in a bed on the outside of a wood privacy fence… then under-planted them with spring bulbs.

One client even went so far as to deliberately force its growth until it was the largest in Oklahoma County...


Any way it is used... it shines!