Bottlebrush Callistemon Hannah Ray (Melaleuca)

Hannah Ray weeps and screens at the same time, which not every pendulous cultivar manages. It reaches around four metres with pendulous outer branches, and the difference you notice first is foliage rather than flower: new growth breaks soft silvery pink and hardens to grey green, so the plant reads cooler and lighter than the deep green cultivars standing beside it. Red brushes hang out on the drooping tips where you can see them instead of sitting buried in the bush.

Give it the width or lose the point

The branches need somewhere to fall. Squeezed into a 600mm bed beside a path and then cut back every time it leans over the pavers, Hannah Ray loses the pendulous tips that are the whole reason to buy it, and what remains is a stubbed cylinder of grey twigs that any upright cultivar would have given you for less. Allow a bed at least two metres deep, or plant something else in the tight spot. In a row screen, set plants 1.5 to two metres apart, remembering that each canopy needs room to hang and not merely room to stand.

It suits coastal and near coastal gardens from southern Queensland through New South Wales and into Victoria, and does as well in the drier air of Adelaide and Perth. Salt laden wind does not trouble it, which is why it turns up in beachside streets. Clay and brief puddling after heavy rain are both fine. Water deeply and infrequently while it establishes, then ease back, because the grey cast in the foliage holds better on a plant that is not being over watered, and that grey is a large part of what you are paying for.

The weeping forms, ranked by commitment

Dawson River Weeper hangs harder and is grown as a specimen where nobody takes shears to it. Captain Cook is the mounded dwarf at the other end, low hedge material with no real fall to it. Hannah Ray is the middle position: enough weep to look like a weeping bottlebrush, enough tolerance of a trim to hold a screen line along a boundary. It is also the pick for an exposed coastal site, where the silver in the new growth reads more strongly than it does in a sheltered garden. More options are grouped under privacy screening.

Trimming without flattening it

Follow the fall of the branch. Tip prune just below the spent brushes as each flush finishes, and let the outline stay uneven rather than cutting a hard line across the face. Old bare wood recovers slowly here and often stays gappy, so do not chase a shape by cutting hard into it; on a plant this size a mistake takes two seasons to grow out. Check soft new growth for sawfly larvae in spring and for scale on any plant under water stress, both simple to deal with early. Put any fertiliser out at the drip line rather than against the trunk, and hold off reshaping until the plant has been in the ground two full seasons.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 9 sizes, from 125mm 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 planting for birds.