Red buckeye trees will bloom in full shade, but they produce more flowers when they receive three or four hours of sun a day. The flowers are the reason you want the tree in your landscape.

A: Red buckeyes are lovely, small, spring-flowering native trees. They can grow readily from seed, but you do need to plant the seeds fairly quickly, as the seeds do lose viability rapidly.

A flash of bright red in the shady woods is always a treat, especially now. This species (“Red buckeye," Aesculus pavia) is most often a small, slender tree, or perhaps just as commonly, a shrub.

There are hundreds of Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) options with many dwarf varieties. "Some have an upright habit, such as 'Red Dragon,' and others have a more weeping habit, such as 'Waterfall ...