Find the right native tree or shrub for your site by filtering on USDA hardiness zone, mature size, sun, soil moisture and what you want from each species. The list narrows as you set each filter. Every result is a tree or shrub we grow from seed, so anything it shows can be requested now and ordered once it is priced.
Best fits first: those that list your soil outright, then those that only tolerate it.
Still a long list. or set a height limit.
Its page: 6 ft apart for a hedge.
Blue-black berries nearly half fat by dry weight ripen from August for robins, bluebirds and catbirds, after flat white flower heads in May for the bees.
Its page: 20 ft apart.
A flat-topped native hawthorn with thorns 2 to 3 inches long, white flowers in May and June, and dull red haws that often hang on until January.
Its page: 6 ft apart in a hedgerow.
A thorny citrus-family thicket shrub, the giant swallowtail's other native host, with lemon-scented leaves and red capsules of shiny black seed.
Its page: 12 ft apart for a screen.
A tough evergreen for windbreaks and screens on dry, poor ground, whose frosted blue cones on female trees feed cedar waxwings and other birds all winter.
Its page: 4 ft apart for a screen.
White berries on red stalks, about a third fat, feed migrating warblers and sparrows in September. A thicket shrub for dry or wet ground, sun or shade.
Its page: 4 ft apart for a hedge.
Waxy gray berries hold above the snow all winter for yellow-rumped warblers, tree swallows and quail. A salt-tolerant shrub that fixes its own nitrogen.
Its page: 40 ft apart.
A red oak with long, glossy leaves that have no lobes at all, turning russet in fall and clinging to the branches through winter.
Its page: 10 ft apart for a screen.
A native evergreen of the olive family for screens in sun or shade, with fragrant spring flowers and, on female trees, dark blue fruit for birds.
Its page: 6 ft apart for a screen.
A fast thicket dogwood for dry or wet ground, with creamy flowers in late spring and white berries that dozens of kinds of birds eat.
Narrow the list to 12 or fewer and we can email you when any of them is ready to order.
Be first
For : one email per plant when it is priced or back in stock, and nothing else. Each carries a code for 10% off the plants in that order, not shipping or tax.
In the finder's list the best fit comes first: trees and shrubs whose pages list your sun and soil outright, then those that only tolerate them. Within each group, those with your zone in the middle of their range come before those at its edge.
No: the finder lists native trees and shrubs to plant, matched to your zone, size, sun and soil. To name a tree you found, our articles on what a tree dropped and on telling trees apart in winter can help.
Set the finder's height limit to the room you have: it matches the top of each species' typical mature height. Our article on small trees for a small yard says how far each one goes from a house.
Within 15 feet of the wires, the International Society of Arboriculture says a tree should mature at 20 feet or lower. Virginia Cooperative Extension allows trees to 25 feet within 20 feet of the wires, and suggests large shrubs under 15 feet directly under them.
Divide the hedge's length by the spacing, round down and add one, since a straight row has one at each end: a 40-foot hedge at 4 feet apart takes 11. On its Hedge or screen list, the finder gives each species the spacing its own page sets.
The address carries every choice, so a copied link opens the same list. The page draws that list before any script runs, so a shared link and the page's Markdown copy show the trees and shrubs themselves. These are its keys:
Each tree's facts come from its own page: its zones, mature height, sun, soil, labels and hedge spacing. The 20 and 40 ft height steps are the International Society of Arboriculture's zones by overhead wires (Avoiding Tree & Utility Conflicts, 2021). Within 15 feet of distribution wires, the species chosen "should have a mature height of 20 feet (6 meters) or lower". From 15 to 50 feet out, it should have "a potential mature height of 40 feet (12 meters) or lower". The planting-site check follows the same zones. The 30 ft step is the small-tree ceiling the growth estimator uses for its generic small tree. Virginia Cooperative Extension draws the low zone wider, to 20 feet from the line, where "trees in the low zone should not exceed 25 feet at maturity" (Selecting and Managing Trees to Avoid Conflicts with Overhead Utility Lines, 2024). Under the line itself it suggests large shrubs with "a mature height of less than 15 feet", the limit's first step. A ZIP code's zone is the 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map's ZIP code listing, prepared by the PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University.
When nothing fits, the site is usually the problem rather than the catalog: tell us the zone, soil, sun and what the tree needs to do, and we will suggest something.
The address carries the tree finder's inputs, so a link opens it filled in, and Copy link on a result writes one: zone (a whole number from 2 to 10), size (shrub, small-tree, medium-tree or large-tree), height (a mature height to stay under: 15, 20, 30, 40 or 60 feet, or 60-plus), sun (full, part or shade), moisture (dry, average or wet), want (one or more of flowers, fall-color, winter-interest, wildlife, honey, edible, evergreen, rare, early-bearing, screening, nitrogen-fixing, salt, street-tree, erosion-control, shade, wet-tolerant or drought, joined by commas), hedge (a hedge or screen length in feet, for a plant count), sort (featured, name, price-asc, price-desc, height, hardy or fast), compare (the slugs of the plants to compare, joined by commas). For example, /tools/tree-finder/?zone=6&size=small-tree&sun=part&moisture=average&want=fall-color.
