Fast growing privacy screening plants for Australian gardens - Plant Drop

Fast growing privacy screening plants for Australian gardens

Almost every screening enquiry starts the same way. Something needs to be blocked out, and it needed to be blocked out last season. Speed is the first thing people ask about and often the only thing, which is how gardens end up with a boundary that has to be clipped three times a year for the next twenty years.

This guide covers what actually screens well in Australian conditions, how far apart to plant it, and the trade off that rarely gets mentioned at the point of sale.

Growth rate is not a phase

A plant that puts on close to a metre a year does not stop when it reaches the height you had in mind. It keeps going. The species that close a boundary quickly are the same species that will need trimming two or three times a year, permanently, and that will push a metre of new growth back at you every time you cut them.

Slower growers take another season or two to knit together, but they hold their shape with one cut a year and they stay where you put them. If you are choosing between a fast grower and a moderate one, the honest question is not which fills the gap sooner. It is how much clipping you are prepared to do in year six.

A reasonable rule: pick the slowest growing plant that still reaches your target height in a timeframe you can live with. If you can wait three seasons for 3m, you have more options and far less ongoing work than if you want 3m by Christmas.

Work out the height and the sightline before the plant

Stand where you actually sit. On the deck, at the kitchen bench, in the pool. Then look at the thing you want gone. Most people plant on the boundary by reflex, but screening works on geometry, not on fence lines. A 3m tree eight metres from you blocks more than a 5m hedge twenty metres away. If the problem is an upstairs window at the back of the block, a 2m hedge on the fence will never solve it, and no amount of fertiliser changes that.

It is also worth deciding whether you want a screen or a hedge. A screen is an informal visual barrier, trimmed on the sides and left to reach its height. A hedge is clipped on all faces to a defined shape and is roughly double the maintenance. Our hedging plants and privacy screening range overlap heavily, but the way you buy and space them differs.

Lilly pilly, and the psyllid question

Lilly pilly is the default screening plant in eastern Australia for good reason. It is evergreen, dense to the ground when trimmed properly, tolerant of most soils, and available in forms from 2m up to serious canopy trees. The catch is psyllid, the insect that causes the pimpled, distorted new growth you see on older hedges, and resistance varies enormously by species.

  • Syzygium smithii (long sold as Acmena smithii) is the least troubled by psyllid. Broad, soft, forgiving, and happy in part shade. This is the low fuss option if you have the width for it.
  • Waterhousea floribunda, the weeping lilly pilly, is also largely untroubled by psyllid and makes a tall soft screen with a distinctive drooping habit. It wants moisture and does not enjoy dry, exposed sites.
  • Syzygium australe is the variable one. Older unnamed seedling stock is frequently disfigured by psyllid. Named cultivars selected and sold specifically for psyllid resistance are a different proposition and are what you should be buying. The narrow selections are the ones to use where you have less than a metre of bed width.

Colourful new growth on lilly pilly is a flush response. Every trim triggers another one, which is part of why a clipped lilly pilly screen looks good and part of why it demands regular attention. Browse the lilly pilly range and check the species before you commit to a hundred metres of it.

The other screening workhorses

Viburnum odoratissimum is fast, glossy, dense and cheap to establish in numbers. It is one of the quickest ways to get an opaque 2 to 3m green wall in a warm temperate garden. It drinks. On a dry, sandy, unirrigated site it thins out and looks sad, and it will not forgive two summers of neglect.

Pittosporum tenuifolium selections, including the silver and variegated forms, give a fine textured screen that suits contemporary planting and takes clipping well. Two honest warnings. It resents heavy wet clay and can die suddenly from root rot, and it is not a long lived plant compared with lilly pilly. Plan on replacing sections eventually rather than treating it as a permanent structure.

Photinia in the red tipped forms is fast and cheap to buy, and it is genuinely useful in cooler, drier climates. In humid coastal and subtropical gardens it is prone to leaf spot, which defoliates it from the bottom up and leaves exactly the bare legs you were trying to hide. If you are in Brisbane or on the north coast, use something else.

Murraya paniculata is dense, scented, clips beautifully and screens fast in warm climates. It is frost sensitive, so it is a poor choice for cold inland and highland gardens, and it is a known host for citrus pests, which is worth considering if you have productive citrus nearby.

Camellia sasanqua is the answer for a shaded fence line, particularly a south facing one where photinia and murraya sulk. It is slower to close up, but it flowers through autumn, takes hard clipping and can be espaliered flat against a wall in beds too narrow for anything else. Worth a look in the camellia range.

For natives, westringia handles wind, salt and poor soil for lower screens and formal balls, while callistemon, grevillea and melaleuca give informal, bird friendly screening if you do not need a hard clipped face. See the broader native plant range for options suited to tougher sites.

Two things to be careful with

Bamboo. People ask for it constantly because it is fast. Running bamboo should never go in a suburban garden. It travels under fences and paving and is close to impossible to remove once established, and neighbour disputes over it are common. Clumping types are far better behaved but still form a dense, heavy rhizome plate that is a serious excavation job to take out later, and they drop leaf litter year round. If speed is the only reason you are considering bamboo, a psyllid resistant lilly pilly gets you there with a fraction of the regret.

Ficus. Some ficus screen extremely quickly and are widely planted for that reason. The root systems lift paving, block drains and damage pool shells, and they need real distance from any structure or service. Read the mature size and root notes on anything in the ficus range before it goes near a boundary.

Spacing: how many plants per metre of boundary

Work in centres, meaning trunk to trunk. Plants per 10m assumes a single row with a plant at each end.

Plant Typical trimmed height Spacing (centres) Plants per 10m
Syzygium australe screening cultivars 2 to 4m 800mm to 1m 11 to 14
Syzygium smithii, Waterhousea 3 to 6m 1.2 to 1.5m 8 to 9
Viburnum odoratissimum 2 to 4m 800mm to 1m 11 to 14
Pittosporum tenuifolium 2 to 4m 700mm to 900mm 12 to 15
Photinia 2 to 3m 800mm to 1m 11 to 14
Murraya paniculata 2 to 3m 800mm to 1m 11 to 14
Camellia sasanqua 2 to 3m 800mm to 1m 11 to 14
Westringia 1 to 1.5m 600mm to 750mm 15 to 18

Tighter is not better. Halving the spacing buys you perhaps one season of earlier closure and then costs you for the life of the screen, because crowded plants compete, thin at the base and lose the lower foliage you actually wanted. Double staggered rows only make sense where you have at least 1.5m of bed depth.

One more point on species mix. A hundred identical plants along a boundary means one pest or one root disease can take the whole run. On long boundaries, running two compatible species in blocks is cheap insurance.

A screen at height costs more up front, and there is no way around it

If you want 2m of privacy on the day of planting, you are buying advanced stock. That means 100L, 200L or larger containers, and the price step from a 45L plant is significant. It is not markup for its own sake. That plant has been grown, potted on, staked and held in the nursery for extra years, it weighs a great deal, and it takes two people or machinery to move into position.

The honest counterpoint: advanced stock takes longer to settle in per unit of height. A well watered semi advanced plant can close much of the gap on a neglected 100L specimen within a couple of seasons. Advanced stock is the right call when you need the effect now, when the site is exposed and small plants would struggle, or where the screen is the whole point of the job. Where you have patience, spend the money on soil preparation and irrigation instead. Compare the sizes across our advanced trees before you decide.

Getting it to actually grow fast

Growth rate on a plant tag assumes conditions the plant rarely gets. What separates a screen that closes in two seasons from one that takes five is almost never the species.

  • Prepare the whole trench, not individual holes. A continuous cultivated strip gives roots somewhere to run and evens out the growth along the line.
  • Put irrigation in before you plant. Retrofitting drip line into an established hedge is unpleasant work, and the first two summers determine everything.
  • Tip prune from the first season. Do not wait until the plants hit target height. Early trimming is what builds density at the base, and a screen left to run up will be permanently bare at the bottom.
  • Mulch and feed. Fast growth is expensive for a plant. Screening species that are never fed grow at maybe half their advertised rate.
  • Plant back from the fence far enough that you can get behind the row to trim it. 600mm is a workable minimum for most screens.

Ordering

Delivery is a flat $99 per order to QLD, NSW, VIC, SA, ACT and WA. We are not able to send plants to Tasmania or the Northern Territory. Minimum order is $399, which for most screening jobs is a handful of plants, so it is generally worth ordering the whole run at once rather than in stages. Buying the full quantity in one go also means the plants come from the same batch and grow evenly, which matters more on a hedge than on almost anything else.

If you are still deciding, start with the privacy screening collection, measure your boundary, and use the spacing table above to work out your numbers before you shop.

Plants featured in this guide

Everything below is currently available farm-direct, with flat $99 delivery in QLD, NSW, VIC, SA, ACT and WA and a $399 minimum order.

Browse the full range: Privacy & Screening Plants · Lilly Pilly

Related ranges: Conifers and cypress, Buxus and box hedging, Climbing plants, Viburnums.

Not sure where to start? Browse the full range index, every collection and guide in one place.

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