Wife wants to plant a redbud tree. We are located in Longview, TX. Anyone have any recs on where to buy and any tips on having success outside of the normal things you do with a young tree?

Red buds are easy. Dig a hole and it will likely grow. No rec on where to buy b/c i am in Houston.


Just dont buy a dogwood. ugh - so hard. I've tried three times with no luck.

Agree they are easy trees, naturally drought resistant once established. I have actually bad problems with controlling seedling redbuds in my beds, as they produce a lot of seed pods and therefore propagate themselves readily.

I planted a Forest Pansy redbud and love it, but there are now some cultivars of the Forest Pansy called Merlot and Burgundy Hearts. All have gorgeous burgundy leaves in the spring and flower a deeper purple shade. The leaves eventually turn green with the summer heat, but it's still a pretty tree. Will shade the ground underneath it with its wide canopy as it matures, but they are generally slower growers.

I have had good luck with dogwood cultivars as well, but the native dogwoods are disease prone.

As far as where to buy, check with local independent nurseries, as I think you will have better luck than with the big box stores. They are good people to know anyway, as they tend to be much more knowledgeable than your average Lowe's, HD, or Walmart nursery workers.

I bought from Calloway's and planted an Oklahoma redbud in our Dallas yard three years ago. I dug a hole, plopped it in, soaked the dirt with a hose for a few days after that, and then did nothing else outside of the normal sprinkler schedule for that area, and it grows amazingly well. It even survived the great freeze of 2021, when it was only two years old.