Sargent Cherry

Sargent cherry is the large flowering cherry that combines spring bloom, summer shade, and fall color into a tree that does more than just flower. The single, pink flowers open in April in clusters that cover the entire canopy, and they are beautiful. But the fall color is the surprise: orange-red to dark red, consistent and early, arriving in September before most deciduous trees have started to turn. The bark is glossy, dark reddish-brown with prominent horizontal lenticels, handsome year-round. Native to Japan, Sakhalin, and Korea, it grows forty to fifty feet with a rounded, spreading crown.

In Western Washington, Sargent cherry performs well in full sun with well-drained soil and provides a genuine three-season display that most flowering cherries cannot match, they bloom and then become generic green trees until leaf drop. 'Accolade' is a popular hybrid selection with semi-double pink flowers. Several diseases are tracked, including bacterial canker and brown rot. The tree is relatively long-lived for an ornamental cherry, forty to sixty years in good conditions. For a flowering cherry that earns its space beyond two weeks of spring bloom with excellent fall color and ornamental bark, Sargent cherry is the one to choose.