Best Shade Trees for North Texas

Date May 14, 2020

Category

Author TreeNewal Staff

Texas is known for its arid and hot climate. During the summertime, high temperatures can become ubiquitous throughout the state. Trees can provide meaningful shade to homes, apartment complexes, parks, and other areas.

While many trees provide shade, only a select few offer ideal shade to their areas. Therefore, it can be challenging to find the best shade tree for your property if you don’t know where to look.

Luckily, shade trees are common in North Texas. This article will explain why shade is important and the four types of shade trees you should consider.

Why is Shade Important?

Shade provides a cooling effect for its surrounding areas. Homes covered by shade trees are much more likely to experience lower temperatures. The heat surrounding your property can cause your air conditioner to work harder, so the cooling effect of trees can ultimately save you money.

What’s more is that shade trees just don’t reduce the presence of heat, but it can also eliminate excessive humidity, which you will definitely appreciate on those sticky summer days in Texas.

You can escape the heat under most shade trees. However, only a few shade trees can provide a complete canopy effect that can also counteract the surrounding humidity.

Therefore planting some lovely shady trees on your property can be key to saving you money and increasing your comfort on hot days. For these reasons, we would say shade is essential to have on any property in the North Texas region.

To help you get started, here are some varieties of trees that can help you cool down.

Shumard Red Oaks

This tree is native to the North Texas region, growing up to 60 feet tall. Shumard red oaks are deciduous trees, meaning that its leaves will turn bright orange and red before shedding in the fall. Quite the delightful bonus!

These trees are also exceptionally durable. Shumard red oaks are completely drought-resistant and aren’t susceptible to compacted soil, poor drainage, and air pollution. As a result, these trees are a great option for large suburbs and crowded cities.

Bur Oaks

Bur oak trees can grow at lengths between 50 and 60 feet when they are fully mature. Also deciduous trees, bur oaks shed their leaves in the fall turning yellow, copper, and red.

These trees are completely durable and drought-resistant. Transporting bur oaks can be difficult when they are fully mature, though. For this reason, transporting young bur oak trees is typically a more ideal proposition.

With that said, bur oaks can live up to 300 years, making these trees a worthwhile investment for generations to come.

Autumn Blaze Maples

This tree is a hybrid of red and silver maple trees, but it’s named after its stunning red color before the leaves shed during the fall. These trees can grow up to 40 feet, which is much taller than other maple trees.

It’s important to note that the leaves of this tree are extremely toxic to horses. If swallowed, it could be fatal. Therefore, if you want to plant an Autumn Blaze Maple tree on your property, you should keep the leaves out of reach from any horses. These trees are best-suited to grow in suburban and urban areas.

Live Oaks

Live oak trees are the most common tree species in Texas. It can live for hundreds of years and can grow up to 50 feet tall. Live oak trees shed their leaves in the late winter months and quickly grow them back in the spring or summer, meaning that they are semi-evergreen.

Live oaks provide tremendous shade to surrounding properties to eliminate both excessive heat and humidity.

How to Plant the Right Shade Tree

Every property owner has varying needs. Some homeowners have large properties that can house a few full-grown trees. Others only have limited space of growing mature trees.

Granted, shade is important, but you can’t crowd growing trees on your property. Trees need to have enough space for their roots to spread and grow. As such, you should strongly consider hiring an ISA-Certified Arborist to help you decide the best way to install new trees.

These professionals are highly-experienced in rendering accurate consultation and tree-related services. Certified Arborists in particular fully understand where to plant specific shade trees.

They also can assist in the planting and maintenance of these shade trees. Hence, a Certified Arborist can be your summer hero if you are looking for shade solutions!

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To learn more about the Best Shade Trees for North Texas, call our Argyle and Southlake based teams at tel:(817) 592-6846 or send us a message.

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