Cherry Surprise Lilly Pilly Acmena smithii Cherry Surprise (Syzygium smithii)

Cherry Surprise is a compact selection of Acmena smithii, now classed as Syzygium smithii, and its species matters more than its colour. The pimple psyllid, the sap sucker behind the lumpy, twisted tips on so many Syzygium australe hedges, rarely bothers this species, so the bright red flush comes through smooth before maturing to a deep, glossy green.

Size is the other half of it. Cherry Surprise is naturally bushy and compact, finishing at about the gutter of a single storey house, or a little above, when left alone, and roughly half as wide as it is tall. So it suits a medium hedge along a low fence, a dense block at the back of a border, a clipped pair beside a gate or a large pot, rather than a screen against a neighbour's upstairs windows. Ask it to do that job and you will wait a long time for something it was never selected to give.

Where it grows well, and what it wants underneath

The species is native along the east coast from Queensland into eastern Victoria, and Cherry Surprise grows wherever brush cherry does, given the same summer water. It takes full sun or part shade, tolerates light frost, and copes with a wide range of soils, though it fills in faster in ground that holds moisture and still drains after rain. Dig organic matter through the planting strip, mulch afterwards, and give it a deep weekly soak in hot weather until it has been through two summers. For a continuous hedge, plant at 600mm to 800mm centres.

One caution applies around Melbourne. Birds eat the berries and drop the seed in bushland, and west of its native Gippsland range the species has naturalised in the Dandenong and Yarra Ranges, where it is treated as an environmental weed. Where a garden there adjoins bushland, keep the hedge clipped so it rarely fruits and hand pull any seedlings you find.

A medium hedge that psyllid ignores

Firescreen Lilly Pilly is the same species built on a much larger frame, with a copper red flush and the size for a full height boundary screen; choose it when the screen has to rise well above the fence. Cherry Bomb Lilly Pilly is a true brush cherry, grown for its intense red flush and its edible pink berries, but it belongs to the species psyllid targets. For a hedge that stops at gutter height and should never need a psyllid spray, Cherry Surprise is the simpler plant. Browse Lilly Pilly to compare its flush with the red, bronze and purple brush cherries before committing to a run.

Clipping and feeding a compact hedge

It responds well to clipping, which is why it also turns up as topiary. Cut the new shoots back by about a third as they start to firm, repeat whenever the next push has hardened, and the red comes back with every regrowth. A slow release native fertiliser scattered under the hedge each spring, then watered in, is all the feeding it needs. Pests and diseases rarely trouble it. The problems that do appear are nearly always dry roots, a hungry plant, or a hedge that went too long between cuts and lost its lower leaves to shade from its own top.

Choosing a size

This plant is supplied in one size, 45L, at $249.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot it arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to choosing a lilly pilly.