• Patio landscaping benefits from the incorporation of trees, which provide shade and visual interest. According to Catriona Tudor Erler, author of "Complete Home Landscaping," a patio tree should add to the visual appeal of your patio but should not add extra maintenance chores by dropping messing seeds, fruits and sap that can prove a challenge to clean up from a paved surface. When choosing landscaping plants for your patio, avoid these messy trees.
  
  

Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua)

• The sweetgum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua) grows quickly in a variety of soils, develops an attractive oval shape that provides shade and produces attractive red foliage. The seeds, which fall as spiked balls roughly the size of golf balls, begin dropping around the tree's 10th year and fall copiously every year after. They make a mess on a patio, and their spikes are unforgiving to bare feet. However, Gerald Klingaman of the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension suggests purchasing a fruitless variety from a nursery or spraying the tree annually with a compound that stops the development of seeds.
  
  

Cottonwood (Populus deltoides)

• The University of Connecticut Horticulture Department concludes that the landscaping liabilities of the cottonwood tree (Populus deltoides) are "too many to name." Cottonwood is an attractive tree with furrowed bark and triangular leaves that turn yellow in the fall, and it works well as a shade tree. As the name suggests, the cottonwood produces fluffy, cottony seeds that make a mess of your patio. The Siouxland cultivar comes in a male form that doesn't produce seeds but does drop leaves throughout the summer.
  
  

Mulberry (Morus species)

• The fruit of the mulberry tree (Morus species) serves as an important food source for songbirds and other wildlife. It also not only drops on your patio but possibly stains your pavement and patio furniture. Mulberries resemble elongated blackberries and begin ripening on the tree beginning in late spring to early summer. In some mulberry species, male and female trees develop separately, so planting a male tree means that you won't have to deal with messy fruit. Some species also have fruitless cultivars, and the University of Florida recommends these as excellent shade trees.
  
  

Ginkgo

• The male ginkgo tree makes an ideal urban tree, with its fan-shaped foliage that turns vivid yellow in the fall and its ability to withstand air pollution and other stresses of city life. Aside from losing its leaves in the fall, the male ginkgo works well as a mess-free patio tree. However, female trees produce fruit after about 20 years. Not only does this mushy fruit become slippery on patio surfaces, but Ohio State University describes it as smelling "malodorous," an odor that the Virginia Cooperative Extension more precisely describes as reeking of vomit.