Serviceberry: This Tree Does it All!
- Nuts for Natives
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Bumper crop of berries in 2025.
Serviceberries, like so many native understory trees and shrubs, add three seasons of interest to our gardens. First the flowers! Always welcome in spring, typically March in the center of the Chesapeake watershed. In late spring or early summer berries begin to ripen in May. In fall, fabulous yellow and deep orange hues emerge. I had also read in so many places about how tasty the berries are. Until this week, I never had a chance to taste them. Oh wow - they are very, very good.
They are slightly smaller than a blueberry. While the berries do eventually turn blue, they can be picked and eaten as soon as the deeper red shade is reached and they easily fall into your hand. They do have seeds which are easily edible.
This year, for reasons I don't understand, serviceberries in my garden and neighborhood are having some sort of super season. Loads and loads of berries, very little to no cedar apple rust and, this is the unbelievable part, the berries are ripening on the tree and can be harvested before the birds eat them! In my 10 years, with three serviceberries, two trees and a shrub, this has never happened.
Did we experience just the right weather, moisture and temperature combination to cause this? Did drier weather early in spring dampen the prevalence of cedar apple rust this year? Are the trees reaching critical maturity? I do not know. If this is happening where you are and you know why, please do share.
Eastern Red Cedars and Cedar Rust
As you may know, eastern red cedars (Juniperus virginiana), magnificent native trees, support loads of wildlife. My garden has four mature eastern red cedars and the female trees are always loaded with the blue berries. There is a slight downside to these trees though. They are susceptible to two types of rust. These rusts infect eastern red cedar trees and spread by wind to trees in the apple family such as serviceberries.
The rust then shows itself on the fruits of trees in the apple family. I always say they look like small sputniks. Experts say it does not affect the health of the trees. I have learned to live with it because I really like both of these trees and that is just what happens. Except for this year (so far)!
If you have or want to plant both of these trees, there are a couple of things you can try. If you can plant the trees in the apple family "several hundred yards" away from your eastern red cedars, chances of cedar rust effects are much lower. The University of Minnesota also has a list of cultivars of Eastern red cedars that are resistant to cedar-apple and cedar-hawthorn rust.
Or, we can hope for an exact duplicate of this years spring weather and rainfall conditions I suppose!
Serviceberries get a lot of well deserved attention. Robin Wall Kimmerer's new book "Serviceberry" is recently out. It's a delightful and short book about service economies. If you want to dive into the details of growing serviceberry fruits, check out the Garden DC podcast with Kathy Jentz on "Serviceberries and Saskatoons." Or, for the shorthand version, check out Kathy's two minute You Tube video on serviceberries.
Growing:
Serviceberries can be used in formal and informal designs. You can tuck it in as understory trees or use it as a focal point. In this apartment courtyard, four serviceberries flank the corner of a square bed. You can find shrub and tree forms. They are fairly adaptable: part shade to full sun, a range of soils and moisture. The more sun your serviceberry gets, the more brilliant the fall color will be.
Six types of straight species are commonly available as well as several cultivars. This fact sheet from the North Carolina extension lists them all. Most grow to 15 to 25' feet in height and width. If you are space constrained, look for dwarf serviceberry (Amelanchier spicata) which grow about 4 feet high and wide. Please note Amelanchier alnifolia is native to the west coast of the US, not the east.
If you want to harvest berries, think about planting in sunnier conditions and not limbing up the trees from beneath too much to be able to easily reach the fruits.
Some of the tree forms have a lot of suckers that re-sprout at the base of the trunk every year. You can cut those back to the ground. I believe those suckers are how the shrub forms are grown.
I'll also add a Washington D.C. city arborist recently told me serviceberries don't tend to do really well as street trees in an urban environment. I believe he was referring to their longevity. I planted the tree above right in the tree lawn near my home as a 1/2 inch caliper tree and, 8 years in, it seems to be ok but I certainly take the arborist's word for best choices for street trees in urban environments.
Serviceberries. Super and sweet, in so very many ways.
Happy Gardening.
