Parking Lot Trees: 8 Best Trees For Commercial Parking Lots

Parking Lot Trees

Everybody loves to see and find parking lot trees. It provides more shaded areas and more attractive spaces to enjoy during their time on the property, creating a fantastic and pleasant effect on your visitors—the presence of trees in parking changes the look and feel of your space.

Trees for Parking Lots

Parking lots of paved areas are essential urban features that are unsightly in their basic form.

Commercial or residential projects must fulfill specific amounts of parking according to municipal ordinances by using landscaping for these parking areas.

Landscaping in Parking Lots Provide:

Appearance improvement
Pretty shade trees break up an enormous expanse of pavement
Prevents soil erosion
Reduces carbon dioxide through photosynthesis
Adds oxygen to the environment
Reduce stormwater drainage problems
Buffer win & noise
Make passers-by and parking customers happy by providing cool shade.

8 Challenges for Parking Lot Trees

Selecting appropriate trees for parking lots and other paved areas is challenging. Many of the urban challenges that trees face begin with the construction process. But here are more factors you need to know:

The design and engineering of paved surface shed water quickly, often in directions that deprive trees of adequate soil moisture or leave their roots submerged in excess water.
The heat from parking lots and other pavement is exacerbated by the solar heat sink of the pavement, with adjacent buildings and cars adding to the stress.
Limited soil volumes confine roots, restricting root growth, reducing anchorage, and often supplying inadequate moisture and nutrients.
The pressure of compaction and low soil fertility, coupled with other physical, environmental, and human forces acting against trees, makes parking lots and paved areas unfriendly to trees.
These factors combined make 7 – 10 years the average life expectancy of most urban trees.
Parkings are hot and sunny.
Car exhaust adds an extra layer of demanding heat.
As we know perfectly, trees need water, and parking lots don’t have easy access to irrigation.

How to Choose the Best Trees for Parking Lots?

When considering trees for paved areas, we often need to pay more attention to the evident approach. Select your tree according to how well it can adapt to the parking conditions.

A tiny paved island offers limited soil area, root space, little water, and nutrient availability.

A tree that will do well planted there must endure similar conditions in its native environment.

Therefore the best trees for paved areas are those that grow in swampy areas, heavy clays, very sandy soil, and similar locations where nutrients, water, and oxygen are limited.

Let’s learn more about the best trees for parking lots.

The Best Trees for Parking Lots

The best trees for commercial parking lots shouldn’t drop large amounts of debris or have low-hanging branches that would snag pedestrians, scratch vehicles, or obstruct views.
They should be sturdy, drought tolerant, and not need frequent pruning or spraying for pests or diseases.
Trees in parking lots shouldn’t have invasive root systems — there isn’t much room on tiny parking lot islands for roots to spread out.

Do such supernatural trees exist? They do! And we count on a list of a few of our favorite trees for parking lot landscaping:

1. Burk Oak

It tolerates pollution and heat stress. It also brings dense shade, keeping cars.

2. Cedar Elm

It provides nice shade, and you can also find this lovely tree in urban settings.

3. Mexican Sycamore

It offers a beautiful shade canopy, and its pretty autumn color is an excellent bonus.

4. Red Oak

This adaptable and majestic tree thrives in nearly any setting.

5. Live Oak

This evergreen oak stays green and live throughout winter. It adapts to almost any soil, including compacted soil.

6. Monterrey Oak

It is excellent for shade in hot and sunny parking and extremely tolerant in summer.

7. Chinese Pistache

It is an enchanting color tree that changes dramatically of orange and red leaves in the fall. It also tolerates many soil types.

8. Lacebark Elm

The lacebark elm is a shady and graceful tree with a charming bark pattern. It can tolerate the often compacted soil of parking lots and the trampling feet of customers.

Trees Never to Plant in Parking Lots

Avoid trees with large surface roots that may damage pavement, and trees with dense canopies that block light penetration to the pavement, preventing rapid evaporation of precipitation.

Also, omit trees that can litter the pavement with fruit, branches, and large leaves.

Here you can find a list of the fourteen most known and unsuitable trees for restrictive parking areas:

Norway Maple
Red Maple
Silver Maple
River Birch
Hackberries
Beeches
Sweetgum
Southern Magnolia
London Planetree
American Sycamore
Pin Oak
Willow Oak
Weeping Willow
American Elm

Conclusion

It is too important to know that the wrong parking lot trees could cause significant disasters, like:

Drop a mess
Add unnecessary maintenance expenses, which include:

1. 1. 1. Frequent pruning and trimming
    2. Lots of water
    3. Proneness to pests and diseases.

Finally, remember that to choose the best trees for parking lots, you must consider their ability to adapt to the conditions of the parking lot.

The spotted lanternfly gathers in large numbers to damage trees.

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