Beach Acronychia Acronychia imperforata

Beach acronychia grows on exposed headlands and behind the foredunes from northern New South Wales up the Queensland coast, which tells you most of what you need. The habit is dense and rounded, furnished to the ground, and the leaves are thick and glossy with a blunt or notched tip that shrugs off salt spray. Small cream flowers are followed by pale yellow fleshy fruit that birds work over. Landscapers use it as a clipped hedge, an informal screen or a windbreak along a coastal boundary.

Where beach acronychia earns its keep

Warm frost-free coastal districts are its country. It handles sand, wind and salt-laden air at the front of a block, and it will take a heavier soil provided the site drains. Cold is the line it will not cross. A hard frost, or a cold wet inland winter, burns the foliage and sets plants back unevenly, so a hedge line never squares up again. This is a coastal and subtropical plant rather than a tablelands one. For a clipped hedge, space plants around 600 to 750mm apart; for an informal screen, closer to a metre. Trim the sides from the first year so the base thickens as the plant gains height, because an acronychia allowed to run up bare-legged is difficult to bring back. Keep it mulched and clear of competing turf while it establishes, and plant the whole run at the one time from the one grade so the hedge matures evenly. On a raw front-line site, a temporary shade-cloth screen through the first winter takes the sting out of the salt while roots go down.

Species form or the Vista selection

The straight species is the more variable plant. Seedling-grown stock differs from one plant to the next in leaf size and in how upright it sits, which is an advantage if you want an informal, natural-looking screen or intend to let a few grow up into small rounded trees. Vista is a selected form chosen for even upright density, and it is the one to use where a hedge has to read as a single flat face. If the site is inland or shaded rather than coastal, cinnamon myrtle is the better screening native. The largest grades of the species sit under super advanced trees, for an established screen from the day it goes in.

Clipping and feeding a coastal hedge

Clip in the warm months while the plant is actively growing, taking a light cut two or three times through spring and summer rather than one hard cut a year. It responds well to shearing and will break from older wood if you need to reduce a neglected hedge, but stage that over two seasons rather than cutting everything at once. Feed after each trim with a slow-release fertiliser suited to natives, spread to the drip line and watered in. Refresh mulch each spring and check for scale in still corners. If a plant fails in an established run, replace it with the largest grade that will fit the gap, because a small replacement rarely catches its neighbours.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 8 sizes, from 140mm up to 200L, priced from $16.95 to $1209.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. The smaller pots hold younger plants that cost less each and establish quickly, which suits hedges, screens and mass planting where the plant count adds up. The larger sizes carry several more years of growth on the farm and give height and presence straight away, which is what you want for a single feature position or a screen that cannot wait. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to when to plant in Australia.