Grevillea

Twenty-four listings, and flower colour will not tell you which one you are buying. The split is twelve low or ground-hugging plants, ten shrubs, one forest tree, and one shrub grafted onto a clear trunk.

Half the range lies on the ground

Six run flat. Only three strike roots as they travel and knit into a self-repairing mat, which decides the plant count on a batter. Poorinda Royal Mantle is the landscape workhorse for car park islands and long mulched strips, and the one groundcover here that takes a wider range of soils, though it sulks in permanently wet clay. GaudiChaudi travels for metres while staying ankle deep, with soft bronze-red new growth. Gin Gin Gem does a similar job and is the Western Australian one of the three, so it wants gritty soil and a mound, not improved mix. Green Carpet, Forest Rambler and the prostrate Grevillea banksii sold as Red Silky Oak run flat too, but cover by plant numbers and spacing, so order enough to close the gaps and keep mulch off their crowns.

Six more sit low without forming a mat: Bonnie Prince Charlie, Border Red, Mini Marvel, thelmanniana, Woolly Grevillea and its dwarf selection Mt Tamboritha. The last two are high country plants out of Victoria and New South Wales, reliable through Melbourne, Canberra and the tablelands, and both are unreliable through a humid summer, which can take a healthy plant in a week. Woolly Grevillea varies from low mound to near prostrate, so judge the plant in front of you.

The shrubs, and the two that are not

Ten listings make shrubs, from a low prickly barrier to a screening line. Grevillea olivacea Red is the odd one out, with blunt olive-like leaves instead of ferny ones, and in Western Australia it is a standard informal hedge and windbreak plant on limestone and exposed coastal blocks. Grevillea juniperina Stripy is its opposite: tablelands stock from New South Wales that takes hard frost and grows in the sort of cold, tight clay that kills the western species outright. Winpara Gem handles salt wind. Ellendale Dragon has no published parentage, so judge it on performance. Gilt Dragon is a Western Australian preissii selection, prickly and grey-green, and another that wants gritty soil and a mound. Lilliane screens at eye level and is worth training properly. Pink Profusion is bought for dense twiggy cover as much as flower. Apricot Glow and New Blood are the colour picks. Red Hooks makes ten, and it is Western Australian too, so on the humid east coast it goes high on a mound or not at all.

Silky Oak is the outlier: a fast canopy tree for acreage and windbreaks that will pass power lines; pruning will not hold it at shrub height. Watch the name: Red Silky Oak is the prostrate banksii above, not this tree. The Grevillea spp. Assorted Standards arrive as a foliage head on a clear trunk in a 330mm pot, as assorted varieties, so order a full row at once if you want it matched.

Which grade to buy

Stock is weighted small: twenty-one of the twenty-four begin at 150mm or under, and fifteen offer a 140mm. Only three start larger, Pink Profusion and Mt Tamboritha at 5L and the standards. Just four listings carry a grade above 250mm, two of them the tree and the standards. So Grevillea hookeriana Red Hooks, which runs to 90L, is effectively the only shrub you can buy here at screening height, once it is up on that mound, and GaudiChaudi at 330mm the only advanced groundcover. Two listings drop to 70mm tubes, about a fifth of a litre: Woolly Grevillea and Forest Rambler, for a bank that needs numbers.

For a native that clips to a flat formal face, try westringia instead. For drainage, feeding and pruning, read the guide to planting for birds.