After growing for many years, dogwoods may reach a height of around 15 feet in your yard or flower bed but in a wooded location, you can see them grow to 40 feet tall.

Besides their beautiful blooms, I think a lot of gardeners appreciate their petite size and how their berries (known as drupes) attract birds in the winter. Want to grow a new dogwood tree? You can actually plant a drupe, which contains a single seed.

When you consider this, planting a dogwood is a great investment. With just one tree, you can attract birds year after year to your garden. Look at this Goldfinch, he can't get enough of these dogwood drupes.

The name "Dogwood" gets it's name from “Dagwood”. Dagwood was its original name since the slender stems of the tree were constructing into items such as daggers, arrows, and skewers. It wasn't until 1614 that the tree was renamed "Dogwood".

If you've ever heard the sounds of a dog barking when the wind moves through a dogwood, then you can see why we call it the "Dogwood". But there's another reason: In the olden days, people boiled the wood from the tree and treated mange in dogs and other skin problems.

Native Americans used dogwood for many things. One way they used the dogwood was for constructing toothbrushes, daggers and arrows. They also used the berries; the men ate them during religious ceremonies, and they were also used in conjunction with the bark and roots for making natural dye.

Yes, you can make natural blue dye, too, using the dogwoods' bark or greenish-blue dye using the red berries.

• Flowering dogwoods are hardy in USDA zones 6A through 9B. Always grow dogwoods that are native to your area for best results.
• Seeing leaves that are pale or sparse or short twig growth may mean that it's time to fertilize. If you see these signs, you'll want to do so during late winter with a 12-4-8 or 16-4-8 fertilizer. (Be careful not to get it on the dogwood's trunk.)
• Dogwoods do best in light shade but never in full shade. They can also grow well in full sun but this will require the tree to be planted deep enough to access plenty of water in the ground.

Not sure what your grow zone is? Find out below.

Ready to plant a dogwood? It's about time! (Literally) Pick up a dogwood tree at your local garden center and transplant it around late winter. You'll want to plant it in this window of time before the new growth starts in spring. (Makes sense, right?)