Hi! I am not to far from you in West Knoxville. Are you famalier with the Little Gem Magnolia? I am in love with them. I have a typical "knox-block" small yard so I don't have a lot of space. I get the charm of the southern tree without the LARGE size. They only get to be about 15 to 20', can tolertate a variety of soil types and have a white fragrant flower in summer.

The one I have is VERY young and yet bloomed 4 or 5 blooms over the summer. (My friend was mad that her regular magnolia is 8 years old and has only had a hand full of blooms!) I spent a fortune last year on this one and then saw a small one at lowes yesterday for 29.99! (And it looked really healthy!)

I have read about the Little Gem. I'm kind of weary about buying stuff at Lowe's though b/c they can easily mis-mark items. Once my grand-mother bought a crepe myrtle that was supposed to only be 6 ft ... it's now 15 ft tall!

Anyways, I'll give them a call and see. I think that will be what I end up buying. Thanks!!

We have a Little Gem and it's great!

Just so you know, Little Gems stay rather narrow rather than getting broad as they age. But I'm unaware of a short, broad M. grandiflora, so I'd say Little Gem is your best bet. This variety also has the added benefit of blooming off and on all summer until hard frost.

The deal with magnolias is, if you got the gorgeous flowers, you also got the cones. :)

Marty

I'm ok with some cones, I understand that it's part of the deal, I just want to minimize them... that is my main reason for wanting a smaller cultivar - less cones. I really do want the rounded shape as opposed to the cylindrical triangle shape.

I'm ok with it being up to about 30 - 40 ft ... I just don't want one of those monsters that basically covers my whole yard.

I've looked at sweet bay but i'm scared that it would die if we had a drought. So far, I'm leaning towards the little gem but I'll consider anything :-)

Thanks so far for all of your input.

Well, thirty to forty feet is bigger than 'Little Gem', and gives you more possibilities. My most favoritest hardy M. grandiflora cultivar is 'Bracken's Brown Beauty', so named because it has extremely heavy indumentum (that fuzzy brown hair on the underside of the leaf). 'BBB' has a broader habit -- still upright, but much rounder than 'LG'. It's a very dense tree, with medium sized leaves for a grandiflora (smaller leaves than 'DD Blanchard', another commonly found hardy cv., but bigger leaves than 'Little Gem'). Very striking tree.

Sweetbay would be a good choice for a rounder tree, and is quite drought tolerant when established, so I wouldn't be concerned about that issue. They're often naturally multi-trunked which adds to their rounder profile, but you can find single trunk specimens without too much trouble if that's your preference. Be sure to get one of the evergreen varieties -- the species tends to be deciduous, esp. in a cold winter. Look for 'Moonglow' or 'Henry Hicks' -- both are evergreen and hardy in zone 6. M. virginiana v. australis is often billed as evergreen, but in my experience that feature varies from tree to tree.

Marty

I live in Northeast Tennessee and I have a nice Edith Bogue that I'm very pleased with. It's oval-shaped, a little better than thirty feet high and twenty more or less wide. It does litter-really, but its blooms are fragrant and they're usually ten to twelve inches. It's also as cold hardy as any magnolia I know of, and it handles the heat well.

It doesn't fit your requirements very well, but it's a really nice magnolia.

Ray

Dang Marty, I wish you'd come move in next door to us!