Magnolias in Australian gardens: Little Gem, Teddy Bear and the deciduous types

Magnolia is one of those genus names that hides three quite different plants. The evergreen grandifloras are structure trees that happen to flower. The deciduous tulip types are flowering events that happen to be trees. And the michelias are perfumed hedging shrubs that most buyers do not realise are magnolias at all.

Pick from the wrong group and you get a tree doing the wrong job for a decade. Magnolias shoot poorly from old wood, so cutting one back and starting again does not work.

Start from the job, not the photograph

What you want	Which group	The catch
Evergreen boundary screen	Compact grandiflora	Slow. Buy near the size you need.
A column in a 1.5m side passage	Narrow grandiflora	Narrow beds hold the worst soil on site.
Flower at the end of winter	Deciduous	Wants chill and shelter from wind.
A perfumed clipped hedge	Michelia	Limey or wet ground stops them dead.

The evergreen grandifloras: structure first

Dense, glossy, dark green foliage all year, with felted rust brown undersides that read as a second colour whenever the wind moves. Big lemon scented cream flowers open a few at a time across the warm months.

Choosing between the compact selections

Little Gem is the narrower, more upright and slightly more open of the three, with smaller leaves. It is the one specified for a boundary line or for training flat on a wall. Teddy Bear carries a broader, rounder, heavier leaf on a denser plant. Little Gem reads as a slim column, Teddy Bear as a solid dome that looks substantial while still young. Kay Parris has a narrow wavy edged leaf, holds foliage lower for longer, and flowers within a season or two. It is the pick in a warm humid climate.

Width decides the rest

Alta holds the same leaf on a tight upright column, and it gets bought with a tape measure, for driveways and side setbacks where a spreading tree would push against the building. Coolwyn Gloss blocks a neighbouring second storey, climbing while staying furnished to the ground, but it wants width in return. Exmouth and the straight Magnolia grandiflora species are broad trees with a wide skirt that eventually own the ground beneath them.

Spacing, and the grade to buy

Selection	Spacing	Job
Little Gem, hedge	1.5 to 2 m	Boundary screen
Little Gem, espalier	1 m, on a wire frame	Flat on a wall
Teddy Bear	about 2 m	Entry pair
Alta	1.5 to 2 m	Narrow setback
Coolwyn Gloss	2 to 2.5 m, set 1.5 m off the palings	Two storey screen
Exmouth, avenue	6 to 8 m between trunks	Specimen line

Give each plant light on all sides or the shaded face goes bare. Keep the line well off the fence, or someone cuts the back of it flat every year, and once the skirt is gone it does not come back. Growth is slow to moderate, so a 5L Little Gem at $37.95 suits a run you can wait on.

The deciduous magnolias: the spring event

The tulip magnolias flower in late winter on bare wood, and for two or three weeks they are the whole garden. Goblets in white through pink to deep burgundy open before the leaves.

Wind ends the display more often than frost

Most people blame frost. On most Australian sites the wind gets there first. The blooms are large, soft and carried with no leaf cover, so an exposed corner or a gap between buildings that funnels the breeze browns the petals within two or three days. There is no second flush. In a temperate or coastal garden, give it morning sun with a building or hedge upwind, and stay out of frost hollows and open lawn with clear sky overhead. In a real frost district that reverses: a bloom that freezes overnight and thaws in direct early sun browns within hours, so site the tree where the sun arrives late.

Colour, and what your district does to it

Black Tulip and Vulcan hold the deep end, close to black in bud on one, deep red purple on the other, and both hold that tone better in cool districts than in a hot western position. Cleopatra runs deep pink to wine purple and reads from the far end of a garden. Cameo is the quiet one, soft and pale, lost against a rendered wall and right against a dark hedge. Elizabeth is the primrose yellow, deepest through the highlands and tablelands, opening close to cream after a warm spring. Yulan is the Chinese species behind many of these hybrids: white upright goblets on a broad frame that needs room.

They perform when almost nothing else does, so site one where it is seen from inside the house, not down the back where nobody goes in August.

Which districts suit which group

Deciduous magnolias need a real winter: the Southern Highlands, the Blue Mountains, the Central Tablelands around Orange and Bathurst, Canberra, the Adelaide Hills, the Dandenongs, Ballarat, the Perth hills. In Brisbane and on the Sunshine Coast the flowering is lighter and less reliable.

The evergreen grandifloras take urban heat and frost once established, and cope with coastal gardens, though salt laden wind marks the leaves, so on an exposed block they belong behind a fence, not on the seaward boundary. Their real limit is soil chemistry. On alkaline ground, and where lime has leached out of concrete, render or a nearby path, the foliage yellows between the veins while the veins stay green. That is live on the Adelaide plains, and on the calcareous sand behind the Perth coast. Correct it with an acidifying fertiliser carrying chelated iron and composted pine bark mulch.

The michelias: perfume and privacy

The third group, once sold as Michelia and now classified within Magnolia, is the practical one. Fairy White holds glossy dark foliage right to the ground where older michelias go bare at the base, and carries scented white flowers in succession through spring, the display running for weeks. Set plants 800mm to a metre apart for a hedge.

The Port Wine Magnolia is the clipping specialist. Its flowers are small, dull maroon purple and easy to miss, releasing a fruity scent most people call banana or bubblegum on warm still mornings. The bush is what sells it: dense from the ground up, finely twiggy, and it takes a clip better than most fragrant evergreens. Michelia Coco is the evening counterpart, larger creamy cups that fill a courtyard after dark.

Frost is the dividing line

Fairy White handles cooler southern gardens and is the pick for Melbourne, Adelaide and the tablelands. Coco is not. Treat that one as subtropical to warm temperate: frost burns the young growth and takes the flower buds before they open, so in a cold district you keep the shrub and lose the reason you bought it. In alkaline ground, or clay that stays wet through winter, the leaves go pale between the veins and the plant stops. Feeding does not fix it. Raise the bed or use a wide pot.

Getting any magnolia established

The roots are fleshy, brittle and close to the surface, and they resent disturbance and competition. Dig wide, not deep, and improve the ground sideways from the trunk. Set the top of the root ball level with or slightly above the surrounding soil; planted low, or with mulch heaped against the trunk, a magnolia rots at the collar. Water deeply once or twice a week through the first two summers. Plant in autumn or early spring. Feed at the end of winter and again after flowering, with a controlled release fertiliser for acid loving plants.

Bare root stock has to go straight in

Several deciduous types are lifted bare root over winter, and that is where they most often fail. The roots are brittle rather than fibrous and will not tolerate drying out, or a fortnight in a bag in a shed. A plant whose roots have dried leafs out weakly, stalls, and often never comes away the following year. Dig the hole before delivery and water in the same day.

What goes wrong

• Shears. A hedge trimmer cuts straight through the large leaves, leaving hundreds of browning half leaves hanging for months. Shape with secateurs, taking whole shoots back to a node inside the canopy.
• Cutting to fit. Evergreen magnolias do not hide a big cut, and a tree reduced to fit keeps the stubs for years. The same goes for the skirt: lower limbs can stay to the ground or be lifted for a clear trunk, but decide while the plant is young, because a mature magnolia will not regrow one.
• Digging underneath. Trenching for irrigation or scalping with a line trimmer causes dieback that shows as bare branches next spring. Mulch instead, and underplant a deciduous magnolia with nothing more demanding than bulbs.
• Litter over paving. Leathery leaves and seed cones drop all year and rot slowly, so a grandiflora over a pool will block the skimmer.
• Pruning too late, on the deciduous types. Buds for next spring form over summer, so anything past a light tidy in the weeks after flowering removes the display before it happens. The evergreens run the other way: shape a grandiflora in late winter before the flush, and stop clipping a michelia hedge by the end of summer.

What to plant with a magnolia

The root zone rules do the choosing. Nothing that needs regular cultivation, no lawn run hard to the trunk. Camellias share the acid soil, the part shade and the same feed, and they flower through the months the deciduous types stand bare. Hydrangeas and ferns suit the shaded southern side, and mat rush or liriope hold a bed edge without competing hard for water. A sheltered, part shaded position also suits a Japanese maple: one carries autumn, the other the end of winter.

Matching magnolia to job

Boundary screen: Little Gem, Teddy Bear or Kay Parris. Narrow driveway: Alta. Blocking a second storey next door: Coolwyn Gloss, given the width it asks for. Perfumed hedge: michelias at a metre. Room for a true specimen: Exmouth or the straight species. Where a screen has to work sooner, price the advanced tree grades and read our guide to planting an advanced tree first.

The full range, including current sizes from starter pots to advanced stock, is on the magnolia collection page, with companion planting ideas across camellias, feature trees and hedging plants. Every order ships farm-direct with flat $99 delivery in QLD, NSW, VIC, SA, ACT and WA, a $399 minimum order, and the 30-Day Healthy Plant Guarantee.

Related ranges: Gardenias, Hydrangeas.