re: Best trees to plant in yard?

I've been researching this for a couple months now, since we bought our house. In addition to a couple books I got on Amazon, I found this site. Aggie Horticulture
Obviously it's geared toward Texas, but it's a list of all the native trees here. Most of the trees native to east Texas are native to Louisiana too. There's also a site for shrubs. I'd encourage anyone to find native stuff that works in your yard. That's not to say that non-natives are bad, but at the very least you should find a list of invasives that you definitely should NOT plant.

Also, at first I didn't realize there's a lot more that goes into selecting them than just looks. There's sun/soil requirements, shading, pests, deciduous/evergreen, flowering, fruiting, is anything poisonous, etc. And if you do some searching through landscape books written specifically for south La, you might find some interesting trees that work great for your yard that are beyond the boring crappy bradford pears that everybody else has.

Depending on yard size sycamores are fast growing shade trees but drop a ton of leaves in the fall.

The japanese maple is one picky sonofabitch.

Silver maples grow FAST

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crape myrtle

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Everyone in the South has a GD crepe myrtle. You can do a little research and find something better.

Yoshino cherry

Weeping white cherry (personal favorite)

Eastern redbud

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Bookmarked...you frickers sure know your trees

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Same here

I've seen a few maples rec'd in here, and here's another:
Drummond Red Maple
Really thinking about one of these for the front yard.

Redbuds also do not grow fast.

If the guy that bumped the thread is looking for fast growing and and green in winter, he probably needs to go with some form of a pine or cedar. Eastern Red Cedars are really nice, and they smell pretty good too. We had some at my grandparents house that lasted 30+ years until Katrina took them down.

Funny story about trees and survival. While many Live Oaks did not survive Katrina flooding, a good number of crape myrtles did.

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Yoshino cherry Weeping white cherry (personal favorite) Eastern redbud

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all three of these are really pretty when flowering but some look a little sparse when not. They also do not last very long.

If you want a really solid flowing tree that has nice foliage in the warm months go with the Japanese Magnolia. They really showed out this year after the cold winter. They also grow quite fast compared to other flowering ones.

I tell people typically don't mess with Jap Maples unless you want to baby it for a long time. If that's your hobby and you have someone that knows how to get PH levels right in soil, by all means. Problem is those trees are really expensive, so if you kill it, you've wasted like $350 for a 6'-8' tree.