What about crabapple shrubs?

I saw some crabapples trained as shrubs in a couple of local nurseries. Does anyone out there have experience with crabapples in shrub form? I'm thinking about lining our driveway with them - not as a tight hedge, but as a line of open-form shrubs.

Raising my hand...

Growing crabapples on their own roots and as multi-stemmed plants (shrubs, if you will) is not a bad plan. This is how they want to behave anyway, so you won't be interested in hacking away at sprouts from understock or otherwise if you have this as your intent from the beginning.

All the crabapples I'm growing here at the Valley are Father Fiala selections (see PlantFiles for more details) on their own roots and low-branched, if not multi-stemmed. They are happy as pigs in slop, and get better looking every year. Only setback here was climatological, with the 2007 Easter freeze, and insecticidal - the cicada crop of 2008. All has been calm and growthful since then. There should be serious fruit display this fall and winter, barring a dastardly drought.

I say - go for it!

Here's the Valley collection on the day before the other Day that will live in Infamy (the 2007 Easter freeze)...

I still have 10ft high tree carcasses standing as silent memorials to that freeze.
I don't have the heart to cut them down. Mother nature will take care of it eventually.
A very sad day for many gardeners in the entire midwest.

The greatest immediate damage for me was Viburnum plicatum var. (f.) tomentosum selections - 8' 'Shasta' plants and 6' 'Shoshoni' plants killed outright.

Many Viburnum dilatatum clones were severely wracked - my 10' x 10' 'Erie' lost about a third of its canopy and two 'Asian Beauty' that were taller than the eaves of my porch (12' at least) got nailed too.

Fortunately, the passing of time has promoted a lot of healing at the Valley. It just takes the prompting of a question to bring back a bit of the horror, though.

I'll never forget the normally vertical blooms on the 'Ann' magnolia (one of the Little Girls series) frozen horizontally - invective cooling indeed.

VV & Wee: My condolensces on your losses. Sounds like that was a most unhappy Easter. We have a few "monuments" in our yard from a week of -15F this past winter. Very sad. :(
VV:Thanks for posting the pict of the shrubby crabs. Tree forms do really well here, and we're constantly patroling for suckers, so the shrub forms should thrive in uninhibited multi-trunk-ed-ness. Our local tree nursery guy has three vars setting roots in pots - Royal Raindrops, Snowdrift, and Prairiefire. I thought it would make a nice effect to have a combo of all three, with similar forms and slightly different flower & leaf colors, lining the driveway. Thanks for raising your hand. :)

You are quite welcome.

Enjoy your new prospects, and send regular report cards on how they do for you.