Heath Banksia Banksia ericifolia

From a distance heath banksia reads as a fine textured evergreen shrub, almost conifer like, the leaves so short and crowded that the plant looks combed. Then autumn arrives and it lifts upright cylindrical spikes in orange through to deep red, held clear of the foliage and still open in winter when little else is feeding honeyeaters. Sandstone heath around Sydney and the New South Wales north coast is its home ground. In a garden it does the work of an informal evergreen screen.

Sandy ground, sharp drainage and the fertiliser that kills it

Warm temperate coastal gardens suit it, on acid sandy soils of the sort most plants call poor. Full sun keeps it dense; part shade opens it up and cuts flowering. Drainage is the second condition, and a slope, a raised bed or a mounded row solves most sites that would otherwise stay wet. Set plants roughly 1.5 m apart for a screen line and let them grow into each other rather than clipping them into a wall. Growth is moderate, so give a screen a couple of seasons before you expect it to close, and water through the first summer only. The one thing that reliably kills a heath banksia is fertiliser. It belongs to the Proteaceae, and standard lawn, citrus and rose products carry enough phosphorus to burn the fine proteoid roots, so a plant fed the same way as the rest of the bed yellows between the veins and dies over a season. Use a native fertiliser labelled low phosphorus, or use nothing at all, and think about where lawn feed and runoff end up. Sodden soil is the other risk, since it opens the door to Phytophthora root rot.

Where it sits beside the other banksias

Against coast banksia the difference is scale and outline: that one becomes a broad headed tree with two toned leaves, this one stays shrubby, upright and fine, so it screens a fence line at eye level instead of shading a lawn. Silver banksia overlaps in size but flowers in short pale yellow candles and takes colder inland winters, while heath banksia gives you the strong orange to red spikes and prefers a milder coastal climate. Pick heath banksia for winter colour and small bird cover in a sandy garden, and silver banksia where frost is a regular event. If the brief is a screen with winter bird traffic, plant this one in numbers; if the brief is shade, neither shrub will do and you want the tree. Both sit in the wider banksia collection.

Tip pruning, vase flowers and feeding

Start pruning while the plant is young. Tip prune each flush of growth to build density from the base, and cut flowers for the vase, which does the same job. This species regenerates from seed rather than from a lignotuber, so it does not reliably reshoot from leafless old wood and a hard renovation cut usually ends with a dead skeleton. If a plant has already gone bare and woody inside, replace it rather than trying to bring it back. Feed once after flowering with a low phosphorus native product, or skip feeding entirely on sandy coastal ground. Water through the first summer to settle the roots, then taper off and let rainfall carry it.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 3 sizes, from 140mm up to 250mm, priced from $18.95 to $59.95 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. These are younger plants, priced for planting in quantity, and they establish quickly once in the ground. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to Australian native trees.