30 Tall Skinny Trees: The Secret to a Stunning Landscape

This lovely flowering Japanese cherry is an exquisite example of a slender growth habit, making it the perfect tree for creating a tall, colorful border. It blooms in early spring when the branches are covered in pale pink flowers.

This tree is indigenous to Korea, Japan, and East and South China. The cherry blossom, which represents life, health, and happiness, is the national flower of Japan. 

As the sun passes through its canopy, it emits a lovely golden-yellow light quality and has a distinctive shape. With some shaping, the Goldspire Ginko is an excellent example of a columnar tree.

Plant in full sun in well-draining soil. Ginkgo trees thrive in most environments, withstanding heat, drought, salinity, and air pollution.

Kindred Spirit^® Oak is a hybrid of the Columnar English Oak (Q. robur ‘Fastigiata’) and the Swamp Oak (Q. bicolor).  These are amazing columnar trees bred to be powdery mildew resistant. 

Despite being a hybrid, it still produces acorns, serving as a food source for small mammals. The Kindred Spirit is ideal for a tall hedge or, as a specimen, for planting trees in large numbers. It tolerates salt and clay well once established and is also drought-tolerant.

Also known as the Old English poplar, this deciduous tree is included in my list of tall, narrow trees. Still, I don’t advise planting it as it has several challenges. Its inclusion is because it is such a stately example of columnar trees. 

Also known as the Chisos Oak, the narrow oak tree is a columnar tree native to Mexico and Texas. When the plant matures, some of its pyramidal forms are lost. Still, the slender oaks are excellent columnar trees for the first twenty years of their life. 

The narrow oak tree grows to about 60 feet, offering lush green foliage and creating a slender silhouette border tree that is drought tolerant once established.

Our last deciduous tree suggestion is the Swedish columnar aspen, which offers a beautiful shade of emerald green that turns into golden yellow during the fall season. 

Whereas the poplar generally has a short life span, this deciduous tree can live as long as 50 years and offers a brilliant choice of narrow trees.

Use this large evergreen tree of the Aquifoliaceae family to create the ultimate privacy screen or hedge. With branches that grow low off the trunk and often reach the ground, it can be shaped like a narrow evergreen tree.

If not pruned, it may need some space and becomes a beautiful plant when given room to grow.  The evergreen leaves and fruits on female plants add beautiful color and interest in winter gardens.  This species’ branches are frequently used to make Christmas wreaths. 

There’s a reason for this evergreen tree’s name. The Ilex crenata (Sky Pencil) is the epitome of narrow trees. Though not the tallest species, standing only six to ten feet tall, this compact columnar tree is 30 inches wide. 

Sky Pencil Holly has dense, upright branches that help create its exceptional columnar growth. This holly is an excellent example of the fastigiate growing form, branches with an upright growth habit, almost parallel to the trunk.

On the Pacific Coast, the Pacific Wax Myrtle is reputed to be the best native shrub for screening. It can be pruned to become a hedge. Due to its poor soil and salt spray tolerance, this shrub is perfect for coastal planting and helps stabilize banks. 

This ornamental shrub makes a lovely specimen, informal screen, or background interest in the garden thanks to its showy berries and bright green foliage. 

“De Groot’s Spire” thrives in full sun to partial shade and loamy, wet, well-drained soils. It does better in acidic than neutral soils, and mulching is essential for keeping the soil moist around the plant’s roots.

Because of its sensitivity to drought, this plant is best situated in protected areas where it will be protected from the winter wind and other environmental hazards. Snow and ice can harm this plant, and prolonged cold can cause the foliage to become dull yellow or green.

When young, this evergreen conifer takes on a broad, columnar pyramid shape; as it matures, becoming more compact and symmetrical, with its branches growing upwards. It needs a cool environment to flourish and won’t survive in the heat and humidity of a typical American summer.

The Colorado blue spruce is a huge evergreen tree that can grow to a hundred feet tall. It has a columnar shape, horizontal branches, and needles that range in color from blue-green to silvery-blue. As a result of its attractive appearance and vibrant coloration, this tree is often used as a decorative focal point.

“Fastigiata” describes a particular type of tree growth in which the branches are vertically ascending and nearly parallel to the trunk. An evergreen member of the yew family, the Japanese plum yew can be either a small tree or a shrub. Moist and well-drained soil is ideal, but the plant can survive in drier conditions or in sandy or clay soil.

The White Fir tree is a native of the western United States and northern Mexico. It is a narrow columnar evergreen with drooping bottom branches. Soil with a decent drainage system and some moisture is ideal.

As a heavily branching tree, it is highly sought after for its ability to provide shelter and nesting materials and its resistance to heat and drought compared to other firs. However, it is not tolerant to saline sea spray.

Afghanistan is home to the fine-textured evergreen tree known as deodar cedar, which belongs to the Pinaceae (pine) family. It takes on a roughly pyramidal shape early on and can reach fifty feet or so in urban areas.

It should be planted in a rich, well-drained, moderately dry, sunny, and sheltered area, and it is sensitive to both frost and poorly drained waterlogged soils. When choosing where to plant a Deodar Cedar, consider its eventual size.

The Douglas-fir is a member of the Pinaceae family of evergreen conifers that may reach heights of 40–80 feet in a city setting and is one of the world’s tallest trees in its natural habitat. Typically, the lower branches of young trees droop while the top branches rise, giving the tree a thin and spired pyramidal appearance.

The evergreen conifer Holmstrup Arborvitae is native to North America and belongs to the cypress family. It takes ten years to reach 10 feet in height and 2.5 feet in width because of how slowly it grows.

There are lovely, scale-like leaves that grow in dense horizontal sprays and keep their emerald-green foliage far into the winter. The structure has the form of a thin column.

The hybrid Leyland Cypress grows quickly into a tall, straight, evergreen tree with needles. It can add up to three feet to its height in its first few years and thrives in a wide range of soil conditions.

The lovely splays of gray-green needles contrast nicely with the scaly reddish-brown bark. In normal conditions, their lifespan can extend to fifty years.

This tree is a cross between Japanese arborvitae and western red cedar, hence the name “green giant.” The adult height of this tree is around fifty feet, and its width at maturity is approximately fifteen feet; it lives for about fifty years and has a low-branching, dense columnar-pyramidal habit.

Originally from Europe and Asia, the Italian cypress is a tall columnar tree with bluish-green needles. The commercially marketed varieties tend to be columnar in shape and provide rapid development. Mature trees, on the other hand, grow at a glacial pace, if at all.

This popular tree grows up to 100 feet high and 30 feet wide in an urban setting. It grows best in open, full-sun locations that offer well-drained soil. The tree has some risks, including surface roots that may lift sidewalks and damage lawns.

It is most often grown for its juvenile dark green beauty, as the older trees have the risk of toppling over in storms.

The Rocky Mountain juniper grows best in dry, sandy soil with full sun and moist, well-drained soil. It can survive in harsh conditions such as high temperatures, wind, salt spray, dry soil, and air pollution. The tree is resistant to drought and may thrive in various soil conditions.

The common juniper, Juniperus communis, is a wonder plant. It is the most extensively grown conifer because it can survive in a wide range of climates, from extremely cold to extremely hot and humid, and exemplifies a tall, skinny tree.

It does well in medium moisture and full sun. It adapts to its environment and can take on various forms, but most commonly, it is an upright, multi-stemmed shrub up to about three feet in height.

The silvery blue leaves of the ‘Blue Arrow’ is a common reason for growing this plant, and the fact that it thrives despite poor soil, high temperatures, and lack of water makes it a popular choice. 

This narrow tree is a good option for screening an area or blocking noise in small gardens.

This evergreen conifer has thin, arching branches and a skinny trunk, making it one of the most visually appealing and versatile spruces. It does well in sheltered, cool areas with little humidity and wind, and it may not thrive in hot and humid environments, but it may be more tolerant of those conditions than many other spruces.

The Rocky Mountain juniper, Juniperus scopulorum, is a conifer endemic to the western United States and Mexico. It is also known as the Colorado red cedar. Above 5000 meters (16,000 ft.), it is most common in the dry, stony foothills of the Rockies.

The fake cypress, or hinoki, is an evergreen tree in the Cupressaceae family. Compared to other members of its genus, this tree is more compact and ideal for small gardens. Its shape ranges from pyramidal to conical, and its dark green branches are short, spreading, and irregularly spaced.

Cupressaceae (cypress) Taylor Eastern red cedar is a tall, slim cultivar. This tree can reach heights of 20–25 feet, and its blue-green foliage will spread to a width of 3–4 feet, ideal for small gardens.

The Taylor cedar is a tough tree that can thrive in full or partial light and a wide range of soil types. Wet soil is the only thing it can’t handle. Avoid planting this tree in humus-rich soil and supplying it with excessive fertilizer.

The Eastern Redcedar is a sun-loving tree that thrives in medium moisture levels and well-drained soils. It may flourish in many environments, from wet swamps to dry rocky glades. It may succeed in poor soils where most plants die.

It favors damp soils but is intolerant of continually wet conditions. Only a young plant will be able to adapt to the shadow. Of all the eastern United States native conifers, this one is the most resistant to drought.

The term “Fastigiata” describes a specific type of tree growth in which the branches are vertically ascending and nearly parallel to the trunk. Native to the northeastern United States and Canada, the Pinus strobus ‘Fastigiata,’ often known as Eastern white pine, is a fast-growing, long-lived, needled evergreen tree.