You have several choices, but you will need to consider several factors -- the amount of water you can provide, amount of space available, soil adaptability and how much sunlight will reach the area. On slopes, drainage is another consideration. Are you interested in colorful fruit and flowers, fall leaf color or privacy from a neighboring lot? It would be a good idea to limit your choices to moderately slow-growing trees and those with moderate water requirements. You also want to select quality nursery stock and plant the trees correctly. A spring-blooming tree reliable for the Front Range is the Mayday tree or European bird cherry, Prunus padus. It blooms with fragrant chains of white flowers and bears black fruit in July and August that can be used for jellies. Another choice is Amur chokecherry, Prunus Mackii, with striking, shiny orange-red bark and white flowers. Both of these trees are round in shape and will achieve a mature height of 25 to 30 feet with a spread of 15 to 20 feet. If you want red or pink spring flowers, you can choose from several cultivars of crabapple, Malus species. Flower color varies from white to pink or carmine to red and rose. Some varieties will remain as small as 15 feet at maturity while others will grow to a mature height of 30 feet. Shape varies greatly from one species to the next with rounded, upright or spreading types available. Leaf color and the size and shape of fruit vary, as well. A few produce very small fruit or very little fruit. Check to make sure the varieties that interest you are fireblight resistant. For showy fall color you might consider Amur maple, Acer ginnala, a broad, spreading tree with a mature height of 25 feet and scarlet red leaves in autumn. Callery pear, Pyrus calleryana "Aristocrat," is an ornamental with white flowers in spring and rich red color in fall. Thinleaf alder, Alnus tenuifolia, is an upright clump-shaped native tree without distinctive fall color, but with attractive cone-like clusters that remain on the tree during winter. If you are willing to cope with their prominent thorns to have the best of all seasons represented, an excellent choice is Washington hawthorn, Crataegus phaenopyrum, or Russian hawthorn, Crataegus ambigua. The thorns are a small price to pay for showy white flowers in spring, orange-red to red fruit in late summer and red-orange or bronze fall color.

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