Cinnamon Myrtle Backhousia myrtifolia

Cinnamon myrtle grows as a dense many-stemmed small tree from the moist forest margins of coastal New South Wales and southern Queensland. Crush a leaf and the reason for the name is obvious: a warm cinnamon and aniseed scent out of the oil glands. Its ornamental trick is the flower. Clusters of small cream flowers open in summer, then the sepals persist and turn papery, so the tree reads as still in flower for weeks after the petals have gone. Most of its work here is screening and hedging.

The shade-tolerant screen for a difficult side boundary

This is the native to reach for when a screening spot is too shaded for lilly pilly. It grows in full sun through to part shade, takes moderate water, and moves at a moderate to fast rate once away, which is quicker than most people expect of a rainforest-margin myrtle. It suits coastal and inland gardens through New South Wales and Queensland, handles light frost better than the coastal screens in this batch, and will take a seaside position provided it sits behind the first line of planting rather than in the salt spray itself. The failure mode is a hot, dry, unmulched root run. Cinnamon myrtle comes from soils that stay cool and damp under leaf litter, and against a bare reflective west wall it thins from the bottom, browns at the leaf margins and never fills. Mulch deeply, keep turf off the root zone, and water through the first two summers. Space at about a metre for a screen and 600 to 750mm for a clipped hedge.

Cinnamon myrtle beside the coastal screens

The comparison worth making is with beach acronychia Vista. Vista is the plant for a front-line coastal fence where salt wind is the constraint and frost never comes. Cinnamon myrtle is the choice for inland, elevated or shaded gardens, and it brings scented foliage and a long summer display that the acronychia cannot match. If the same site could take a flowering native tree rather than a hedge, firewheel tree is narrow enough to fit and far more dramatic in flower, though you wait years for it. Cinnamon myrtle sits in our hedging plants.

Trimming for density, and when to feed

Trim once flowering has finished and the papery sepals have dropped, which usually falls in autumn, then again lightly in early spring. Regular light shearing produces a formal hedge and leaving it alone produces the multi-stemmed small tree. Both are legitimate outcomes, but decide early, because converting a mature tree back into a hedge means cutting into bare wood and waiting. It is one of the natives that will break from old wood, so a neglected hedge can be brought back, though stage the reduction across two seasons. Feed with a slow-release native fertiliser in spring and again after the autumn trim, applied to the drip line over moist soil, and top up mulch at the same time.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 4 sizes, from 140mm up to 45L, priced from $16.95 to $229.00 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 hedging plants for Australian conditions.