Friday Fabulous Flower - Golden Chain Tree

If you are looking for a small flowering tree to brighten up some spot in your garden, then you must consider a golden chain tree (Laburnum x watereri). For a flowering tree their display is fairly long lived (think 1.75 l vs. 0.75 l bottle of wine), and the tree is fairly tolerant, but maybe not even completely hardy in zone 5 in our experience. They do flower at an early age and can be trained to an arbor if you have the patience, in which case the long pendant inflorescences hang down rather like wisteria. Ours sits way back at the intersection between a perennial bed and a Japanese garden, but the display of even our small tree (recovering from winter die back a year ago) was easily seen from our house 200 feet away.