By "pond", I assume you don't mean swimming pool? Either way, I can't comment on the two trees you mention, but I also can't think of a tree - other than a silk tree - that doesn't have something dropping at one time or another. If it's shade you want, but want to avoid tree litter, maybe consider a shade sail?

Hello tomatofreak
Yes I mean Pond, I already have" sails" (Just painters canvas seen together strung across wire) Under the Pergola. I love them although I would like to find something green for the pond area. I know there will be no such thing as a tree with no litter, But that Mesquite... In that location... was ridiculous! I was hoping somebody would have some experience with the last four trees, To be able to inform me on just how much seasonal litter I would be looking at. Like tipu drops it's flowers and then seedpods but this last one month
I will try to include a picture of my sails

calb_, I could not find a reference to the tipu tree in my copy of this booklet, linked below, but there are many listed that say 'low litter'.

Hope this helps.

Here is a link that might be useful: Landscape Plants for the Arizona Desert

Yeah, like your shade 'sail'; we covered our pergola and patio with coolaroo. I like that stuff. I need another sail for an area where we took down a ridiculous euc.

Very cool! To me the lowest litter tree around is Texas Mountain Laurel (not Texas Ebony which I also grow and love, but it does drop a lot of big beans and tiny leaflets). Chinese/evergreen elms drop a TON of leaves, I would definitely not consider them low, or even moderate, litter trees. Let us know what you pick, and how it works out. Love those shade sails! Keep the posts coming, happy gardening!

Unfortunately, the above link to the Landscape Plants for Arizona Desert is not a good reference when referring for low litter trees. A prime example is they list the Shoestring Acacia/ Acacia stenophylla as being low litter and it is absolutely not. It is in fact, one of the worst trees to put by a swimming pool. It has a substantial leaf shedding period followed by flower drop and then long seed pods. I lived with these trees for years by my pool and finally had them removed as it was just a year round losing battle to keep the pool debris free. I have heard good things about the Mastic Tree being clean but have yet to experience it myself.

Yes, looks like they got that one wrong.

A lot of the problem is the kind of litter that is produced. I used to have a Shoestring Acacia in my side yard which is listed as low litter. In terms of actual volume of litter that was true. The problem with that is that the leaves that did drop were up to two feet long and only about 1/4 inch wide which made it nearly impossible for my blower/vac to pick up, and even manual sweeping was not much help. So I replaced that with a Texas Olive - it lost all its leaves during the winter, but they are growing back now, but since these are all new leaves, it's hard to determine whether there will be a lot of ongoing leaf litter right now.

I have a mature Texas Mountain Laurel in the back. Really fragrant (sometime overwhelming) masses of flowers when they bloom in March. This year it did not bloom anywhere near as much as last year so I have fairly low litter compared to last year. I find that most of the leaf litter (with this plant as well as Oleanders) happens after blooming and the plants take energy from the leaves to make seeds. My biggest issue with Texas Mountain Laurel is the Genista caterpillar. While they are supposed to be eating young leaves (which I found to be true), they also seem to be attracted to the new seed pods and when they eat them a lot of sticky goo from the seed pods drop to the ground. Since It did not bloom this year anywhere near as massively as last year, I don't seem to have a problem with that right now (last year I bought a stepladder and a long stick pruner just to remove the seed pods to reduce the sticky goo on the ground - this may have reduced the population of caterpillars this year). The other thing is that the seeds that do survive in the pods and drop are really hard and heavy - my blower/vac cannot pick them up so I end up sweeping them manually.

Thanx for the information everyone. I ended up planting a fan tex ash. It will not get as big as the mesquite... That's ok... And it will dump leaves only once a year.