My yard is a cataclysm of misfit trees.

Virtually every tree in my yard is a reclamation project.  Each one is a distorted unsatisfactory (unsaleable) specimen that I am ‘saving’.  I have an Autumn Blaze Maple in the shape of an S.  There is the multi-stem Swamp White/Bur Oak which stands 24” tall with a 36” spread centered in my front yard.  (“Look dear!  A new shrub with leaves like an Oak!”)  I have an Ironwood with two central leaders, a Dawn Redwood with no lower branches, a “C” shaped Evans Cherry tree, and a single stem Firebird Crabapple® in the shape of “F” (because branches stubbornly refuse to emerge from its South side) in my yard.  All are visible—to my wife’s horror—from the street.

The oddest looking tree, the one which draws the most comments, is the most normal.  I have a healthy, typical 9’ tall Kentucky Coffeetree growing in my front yard.

If you can imagine a slender, tough, coarse, gray-brown trunk shooting straight out of the ground without a single knob or petiole anywhere along its 7’ length capped by a green pom-pom 2’ high by 3’ wide then you can picture a 4 year old Coffeetree.  Dr. Seuss drew young Coffeetrees in The Lorax but gave them multi-hued canopies.

Mature Coffeetrees are majestic.

They boast soaring architecture, palpable vigor, extreme cold and environmental hardiness, and are Native to the state—which bestows upon them a certain rock-star status these days.

In youth, though, they are embarrassing to have in the landscape.  My neighbors snigger.  My wife sighs.

It is not possible to raise anything from youth to maturity without patiently acknowledging the awkward phases of growth that accompany that metamorphosis.  Years of growing things has taught me that much.  Trees just take longer to pass through their adolescence.

Kentucky Coffeetrees are the awkward pimpled girl with braces and heavy glasses from High school who the football players ignored, the same girl that matures into the unaffected beauty who leaves everyone breathless and envious at the 20 year class reunion.

So I let my neighbors smirk and I endure my wife’s apologies to visitors because I know, as all gardeners do, that these orphans I bring home and plant are not pieces of pipe—static and perfectly formed from inception—but living maturing evolving dynamic youths.  They will grow more beautiful, more perfectly formed, with each passing season.  And my life will be enriched because of it. 

One last thing; that awkward Coffeetree I rescued will outlive us all.