For the Love of Maples

By Lorene Edwards Forkner. This story first appeared in Pacific NW magazine in The Seattle Times on April 6, 2025.

West Seattle gardener Bill Hibler loves maples, so much so that he has about 160 trees in his collection, and that’s not counting seedlings.

“Most are in pots but there are several fairly mature trees in the ground,” he tells me.

A couple of years after retiring from a career in accounting and technology, Hibler hired on at the West Seattle Nursery where he became the nursery’s tree buyer, establishing the greatest selection of Acer varieties in the region.

These are but a few of the maples in Bill Hibler’s West Seattle garden. Photo: Bill Hibler

There’s a lot to love about maples. The ancient trees are a signature of our place. Bigleaf maple (Acer macrophylla), a giant that grows to 100-feet tall with a span of 50-feet, and vine maple (A. circinatum), a small tree or large shrub, both populate native forests throughout the Northwest. For millennia native peoples harvested the trees for medicine and utility. Today, maples in green spaces and public gardens are valuable assets in the urban forest and community enhancing street tree canopies rely on the durability and diversity of the genus.

Available in a variety of profiles from graceful upright trees to shrub like or weeping forms, maples hold pride of place in home landscapes. While maples are widely known for their autumn display, fall fireworks are only the beginning, or should I say the conclusion, of four seasons of garden interest.

The ghostly limbs of Acer tegmentosum ‘White Tigress’ stand out against a green hillside in Bill Hibler’s back garden. Photo: Bill Hibler

With a graceful limb structure and colorful, sometimes fissured or exfoliating bark, maples are a highlight in the winter garden, especially when sited against a backdrop of evergreens. Come spring, emerging foliage on some trees pass through tender shades of pink, peach and bright yellow before maturing to deep green or wine in summer. Appearing with the new leaves, showy clusters of lime green or deep red maple flowers provide pollen and nectar for early pollinators. Pollinated blooms ripen into samaras, curious helicopter like seed pods that twirl and disperse in the wind thanks to a flattened wing structure.

With so many charms and so much to admire, there’s a maple for every landscape. Like most nursery professionals, Hibler recommends turning to your local independent nursery for advice on selecting trees for your specific growing conditions. In his role at West Seattle Nursery, Hibler encouraged gardeners with limited growing space to explore growing maples in containers. After years of experimenting with various soil mixes, he recommends a bark-based potting medium amended with pumice. “The beauty of bark is it both holds moisture and drains well,” he says. Top dressing with lava rock allows water to easily penetrate the potting mix and presents a uniform appearance for the many plants in his collection.

Small but showy maple flowers emerge in spring. Photo: Bill Hibler

What tips a gardener into the rabbit hole of a single plant family? “Gardeners are always going to go deep on one little niche that they love,” Hibler observes.

Maple people are out there and, as president of The Maple Society of North America, the tree-loving gardener is dedicated to coaxing them “out of the woodwork,” and encouraging members, experts and amateur growers alike, to get together for educational and social events. “Specialty plant organizations foster a sense of belonging and bring people together with others that share their enthusiasms,” he adds.

West Seattle Gardener Bill Hibler grows Acer palmatum ‘Rainbow’, a variegated Japanese maple with pink and red foliage, in full shade to protect the delicate leaves. Photo: Bill Hibler

The Maple Society was founded in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s, later expanding to North America, Britain and Ireland.

In addition to celebrating ornamental aspects, the relatively young (compared to its source genus) organization is dedicated to preserving maple diversity, recording botanical knowledge, clarifying cultivar identities and documenting historical information for future generations.

Maple Society members receive a quarterly newsletter, access to the expertly vetted maple database, as well as invitations to explore local gardens and learn from maple experts. Quicky glancing at the list of Commercial Members on TMS website shows the depth of resources available to gardeners in the Western region; several growers and nurseries are based right here in the Puget Sound region

Hibler is looking forward to a two-day Maple Society event in the Portland area and plans for a guided spring tour of Kubota Garden are being explored. Details for these and other events may be found on the website at maplesocietynorthamerica.org.

Fiery fall foliage on ‘Yama kage’ full moon maple. Photo: Bill Hibler

Lorene Edwards Forkner is the author of “Color In and Out of the Garden.” Find her at ahandmadegarden.com and at Cultivating Color on Substack.

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