Hop Bush Dodonaea viscosa Purpurea

Purple hop bush is an upright, open-framed shrub with narrow willow-like leaves in bronze to deep purple, held on evergreen foliage rather than dropped each autumn. Plants are either male or female, and only the females carry the papery winged seed capsules, flushed pink and red, that give the plant its common name. It is planted for screening and for colour on hard, exposed sites, along coastal boundaries, in inland gardens, on roadsides and across reclaimed ground where fussier shrubs do not last.

Colour is a response to the site

Dodonaea viscosa grows across most of the continent and well beyond it, which is why the purple form copes with such a range of Australian conditions, from frost-prone inland districts to salt-laden coastal boundaries. Soil can be shallow, gravelly or poor. What it will not take is ground that stays saturated, so avoid low corners and compacted clay that holds water for days after rain. Colour responds to the site rather than to the fertiliser bag: the purple deepens in an open exposed position and through cold weather, and it drifts back towards olive green in an enclosed sheltered courtyard or through a mild wet summer, so the tone you saw at the nursery is not a fixed property of the plant. The failure mode is age. Hop bush is not a long-lived shrub, it goes bare and leggy from the base if it is never tipped, and cutting an old bare-stemmed plant back hard rarely produces a decent recovery. Tip prune from the year it goes in, and plan on replacing an old plant rather than renovating it.

Hop bush next to the formal screens

Against Tasman Ruffles this is a question of how hard the site is and how formal the result should be. The pittosporum gives a denser, finer, more clippable screen and holds a hedge face, but it wants reasonable soil and resents wet feet. Hop bush is the one for a dry, exposed, poor-soil boundary where a formal hedge would struggle, and it is grown as an informal screen rather than a clipped one. Where the space is narrow and the look needs to be tidy and uniform, Green Rocket is the closer fit. More options in privacy screening.

Tipping young plants and light feeding

Start pruning early. Tip prune young plants several times through their first two seasons to force branching low down, then trim after the seed capsules have faded to hold the shape. Always cut back to a point that still carries leaves, because stems cut into bare old wood often stay bare. Avoid trimming heading into a hard frost. Feeding is a minor job, and a light application of a low-phosphorus native fertiliser in early spring is all a plant on poor soil asks for, while rich feeding produces soft growth that flops and pushes the foliage colour back towards green.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 7 sizes, from 140mm up to 400mm, priced from $16.95 to $199.00 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 fast growing screening plants.