How to grow flowering cherries and best varieties

Thanks to the Japanese passion for flowering cherry trees and the breeding that's been carried out there, we now have a huge choice of these spring-flowering favourites, which are often scented and great for attracting early pollinators.

Which? Gardening has found the ones that managed to stand out from a very beautiful crowd. The varieties tested are on the smaller side and are widely available to buy online.

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Key facts

Plant type Hardy deciduous tree

Position Open, sunny and sheltered from the wind

Soil Any but not waterlogged

How to grow flowering cherries: month by month

Best flowering cherry varieties

Full testing results for flowering cherries

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Caring for flowering cherries

Planting

Choose an open, sunny site, ideally sheltered from strong winds. Any type of soil is fine if it’s not too wet in winter.

Plant bare-root trees November to March and container-grown plants at any time.

Dig a hole wider than the root ball and plant roots at the same height as in the pot. Don’t cover the graft union, which forms an obvious bump on the trunk near the soil line (except on ‘standards’, which are grafted onto the top of the stem).

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Watering 

Roots are shallow, so will benefit from a spring mulch with organic matter and watering in long dry spells.

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How to prune flowering cherries

Any suckering stems that grow from the rootstock, below the graft union, should be cut off as soon as you see them.

Avoid pruning if possible, but do it in summer if you need to reduce the size or remove any branches.

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Common growing problems for flowering cherries

Bacterial canker causes dark, sunken areas on branches and yellowing of leaves. Affected areas should be cut out.

Silver leaf is a fungal disease that turns foliage a silver colour and kills branches. Summer pruning helps to avoid infection.

In a wet spring, blossom rot – a fungal disease – can kill flowers and cause die-back in shoot tips. Collect and dispose of fallen leaves and remove as much affected material from the tree as possible.

How we test flowering cherries

We visited one of the Plant Heritage national collections of flowering cherries, held at Batsford Arboretum, where we were able to watch them burst into bloom and could assess their relative merits.

For our assessments we selected smaller cultivars which were available to buy online from the collection at Batsford Arboretum. 

We visited the arboretum several times during the flowering season. Each time we assessed the trees on our list for different aspects of their appearance, scent and whether insects were visiting the flowers.