White Correa Correa alba

White correa is built for the windward side of a coastal garden. It comes off the southern and eastern coastlines of Australia, including Tasmania, and it makes a low dense dome of thick rounded grey green leaves with a felted white underside that shrugs off salt spray and blown sand. The flower separates it from the rest of the genus: where most correas hang tubular bells, alba opens small white four petalled stars, carried through autumn and winter. It is used for low coastal hedging and low maintenance borders.

Planting into sand, clay or salt

Full sun, moderate growth, and low water once established. It is at home in sand and gravelly coastal soil, tolerates wind and salt as well as any garden shrub, and grows well inland too, provided the drainage is right. It naturally forms a low dome and will hold that shape with a tip prune once or twice a year. Leave it untouched for three or four years and it opens out and goes woody through the middle. For a low hedge, space plants around 60cm apart. Honeyeaters work the flowers steadily through the cooler months, which is worth factoring in when you decide where to put it.

The one thing that reliably kills it is wet feet in heavy clay. Correas will not tolerate a root zone that stays saturated after rain, and the plant browns off from the inside and collapses rather than declining slowly enough to give you warning. Mound the bed, plant on the high side of a slope, or work coarse sand and gravel through the soil. Resist the urge to dig a deep hole in clay and backfill it with compost, which simply builds a sump.

Correa or the silver mounds

Buyers usually cross shop this with Convolvulus cneorum, which gives a brighter silver and larger white flowers but is short lived, resents humidity and will not take a hard trim. Correa alba is the durable one, and the one to choose where a planting has to look the same in ten years. Against Rhaphiolepis Hot Tips, another low hedging option, the split is site: the rhaphiolepis gives coloured new growth and glossy leaves but spots in humid air and dislikes salt, while the correa handles exposure and asks for less. Inland and sheltered, take the rhaphiolepis. On a coastal front boundary, take the correa. See the natives range.

Two trims a year keeps the dome

Trim after the autumn to winter flowering finishes, and again lightly in late summer if growth has run, taking off the tips rather than cutting into thick old stems. It takes a harder trim than most natives its size and responds by thickening up, but the habit is easiest to hold with regular light work. Feed in spring with a low phosphorus native fertiliser, water it in, and mulch with a coarse material kept clear of the stems. Established plants in coastal sand rarely need more than that. Cuttings strike easily if you want to build a longer run from one plant.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 4 sizes, from 140mm up to 250mm, priced from $16.95 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.