Looking for a nice specimen tree that isn’t too large, doesn’t take a lot of maintenance, and puts on spectacular display every spring? Consider planting one or two Golden Chain Trees!
The botanical name for this tree is Laburnum. It originated in Southern Europe. It’s deciduous and reaches 15 to 25 feet in height with a similar spread. A common hybrid is “Vassii” - pronounced “VOSSY-eye.”
The tree will bloom in late spring, sporting spectacular 12 to 20-inch chain-like yellow racemes. Otherwise, the tree doesn’t stand out particularly, but it certainly doesn’t detract either with its addition to the greenery of your yardscape.
BEWARE! All parts of the tree are toxic, so it’s not kid, pet or livestock friendly. However, as long as you don’t have livestock chewing on it, household pets that see it as food, and the little ones are taught not to eat the plants and trees in your yardscape, you should be fine. That’s your decision, but we wanted you to be aware of the potential danger.
Golden Chain Tree will do well in USDA Hardiness Zones 5 to 7. It prefers neutral to alkaline soils that drain well. So, if you have heavy clay soil, you’ll need to “open up” the soil with an initial strong dose of organic material, and top dressings annually of compost. This approach not only gives it fertilization but suppresses weeds, maintains more even root-zone moisture, and moderates soil temperature ranges.
A couple of words of advice to help you REALLY enjoy this tree.
First, if you are in Zone 5, plant the tree in full sun. If you are in Zone 7, plant it in partial sun. This adjusts the sun exposure for your Zone and will help the tree thrive in your setting.
Second, the tree, no matter what zone you are in, benefits from some shelter. Winter winds can be hard on the tree, so planting it where wind and snow load can be lowered a bit is a good thing. Besides, these types of sitings usually end up being in a fenced area, backyard, or patio, and that means you’ll see and enjoy the tree more often.
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. I have a beautiful specimen tree you've got to
consider adding to your yardscape. Stay tuned and I'll tell you all about it. Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay
here from DirtFarmerJay.com. We have a great specimen tree that we became aware of when our
good friends Pete and Sandy gave us one of these trees after we saw it in their yard here in the
mountain west of the United States. Now what is it? It's called the Golden Chain Tree and you can
see why it is called that. This tree, its botanical name is a laburnum and this particular cultivar,
which is short for cultivated variety, is a vacii spelled V-A-S-S-I-I. Now this is a hybrid tree.
These trees were originally grown or came from southern Europe and they do fine in
most of the zones five to nine. If you're in a five zone, you want to plant it in full sun
or mostly sunny. If you're in zone nine where it's much warmer and that's about the southern
range it can reach, you want to put it in a partial sun. And this tree, because it is a
specimen tree and it is not just super robust, certainly does benefit by giving it some shelter
position. Now where we are here, the only shelter it's getting it's somewhat by our house and so
that protects it from some of the winds. But this is a great patio tree and it'll help it also with
some of the winter that happens further north when snow loads hit it and that sort of thing.
So far we've been doing very well with it. Now this tree does not like soggy feet. It needs to
be somewhat well drained. So where we are, we have a high amount of clay and so what you need to do
is continually put organic material. We recently had sidewalks done right here. There was construction
debris down by it and if you look down at the base of the tree you can kind of see right now
this needs to get redone because we just cleaned all this off. And how we're going to take care of
that is take off some of that soil, put a lot of compost and we'll continue to do that. That does
a couple things. It fertilizes the tree, it moderates the soil temperature, suppresses weeds
and keeps the moisture more even and the tree loves it. Now this tree is going to grow to be
about 15 to 20 foot tall and probably just as wide and like any plant like this or tree it is
going to benefit by doing some light pruning. So where you get a lot of ingrown stuff or cross
branching, it pays to trim some of this off and open it up a little bit. Now as far as these
racemes here right here, these long bloom clusters, this is a juvenile tree. So this was planted,
oh Dirt Farmer Maggie was probably a couple years ago, is that right? Two years ago.
And it was probably about this tall when we did so and you can see that it's added approximately
four foot up at the main leader here on the tree. And so this grows relatively fast okay.
So it grows quickly. It's kind of nondescript though other than look at this. When this blooms,
here it is, you know early to mid spring and these will last approximately two to four weeks.
Now they are somewhat, oh persnickety if that's a good word, in that if it gets real cold,
these will shrink back pretty quickly and be done. If it gets really hot and dry, they're also going
to fade in color. They'll lose that light brilliant color here and it'll kind of go to a dull almost
whitish yellow. But during the time they're in this stage, wow they're really worth it. And this
is a showstopper. Everybody that comes by and sees us, and we just had it with our dear friends Bill
and Sylvia, that stopped by yesterday and said, what is that tree out by your front yard? So this
is a great tree for you to consider. It's a reasonable price tree and you can get it at
your favorite garden center, nursery center. Take good care of it. It'll take good care of you.
And during the time that it is not blooming like this, you can see it's just a pleasant
looking tree. It's certainly not a showstopper on its own, but it certainly doesn't detract from
your landscape, your yardscape at all either. We think you're really going to enjoy it. Consider
planting it. If you've got a favorite variety of tree or specimen tree or something you found to
and you'd like to share it with us or with your fellow viewers, won't you do so
in the comment section below? And if we use your idea for an upcoming video, we'll be sure to give
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Hey, thanks for stopping by today. Give it a try. Tell us what you think.
Until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com.
