10 Best Street Trees

Do you have trouble getting trees established along your street? It's no wonder: it's a tough place for a tree to put roots down and thrive.

And even if you do get a tree established, sometimes it's too messy to grow as a street tree. For instance, eastern white pine trees drop large cones and, worse yet, can lose numerous branches in ice storms. Another specimen too messy to be an effective street tree is American sweetgum; opt for a non-fruiting cultivar so as to avoid having to clean up gumballs.

You face the following challenges (among others) in growing street trees:

• pollution
• compacted soil
• infertile soil

You can easily see why pollution-tolerant trees would have a good chance of making a list of specimens valued for plantings along a road. Steve Nix lists the ten best street trees in this article. Literally an A-Z list, About's Forestry Guide begins with Acer campestre (hedge maple) and ends with Zelkova serrata (Japanese zelkova). Steve stresses that only fruitless ginkgo bilobas should be selected as street trees: the fruit is not only messy, but smelly to boot!

_{Photo ©2009 David Beaulieu, Landscaping Guide (licensed to About, Inc.)}