Flowering Fruits

Ornamental Pears are deciduous trees. So their leaves turn yellow/orange/red and fall in the Autumn, have bare branches in the winter, burst into bloom around September in the lovely white flowers you see in the photo, then grow branches thick with bright green leaves through the Spring and Summer. They make excellent shade trees in the Summer if you can get a species with a decent canopy. They are forgiving plants, fairly drought tolerant when established, and will cope reasonably well in wet clay soils. Just make sure you have the room for them to grow and spread, so do your research. Read the labels, ask the sales assistant, google it if need be. If you have a courtyard and *need* a tree, Id actually recommend growing a Flowering Plum as opposed to an Ornamental Pear. Both are non fruit bearing species of fruit trees, with similar looking flowers and growth habits, except that Flowering Plums tend to grow an average of about 5m, as opposed to around 10m with the Ornamental Pear. The catch 22 I guess is that the Plum isnt as hardy as the Pear, so it wont be so forgiving if you forget about it.