The Australian icon that thrives both Down Under and in our gardens over here…
Sometimes garden inspiration can come from surprising places. Re-watching David Attenborough’s Seven Worlds, One Planetfor the fourth time, I know I should have been wowed by epic aerial shots of kangaroos and wombats on snowy mountain tops, but all I could focus on were the amazing plants. Statuesque alpine snow gums rising out of the cold and ice, with lacy, evergreen canopies swaying in the breeze, were to me something straight out of a sci-fi film. The incongruity of such fresh, green life against the face of all environmental adversity just felt so magical. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about it all is that such rugged origins mean these impossibly exotic trees will be perfectly happy in Old Blighty. In fact, there are few trees that are better suited to increasingly small, urban plots, and yet they still remain inexplicably underused.
The highland home of snow gums (Eucalyptus pauciflora subsp niphophila) has turned a plant whose lowland relatives include some of the tallest trees on Earth into a true dwarf, up to 90% smaller. Reaching a maximum of 10m tall when allowed to grow as an upright standard, it can be further shrunk by cutting out the leader after planting, resulting in a beautiful, multi-stemmed specimen reaching as little as 4m tall. This pruning will also constrict the root growth, improve the character of the tree and prevent it toppling in high winds, so I can’t urge you strongly enough to do this, especially on smaller plots.
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