Gymea Lily Doryanthes excelsa

The gymea lily builds a rosette of stiff, sword shaped leaves, each one long enough to arch out and hold a bed on its own, growing from a woody base that reshoots after fire. In time it sends up a thick flower stem well above head height carrying a dense red head at the top, and that single vertical line is what landscape architects buy it for. It is used as a specimen against rendered walls, repeated down a driveway, or massed across a batter where it holds the slope.

Sandstone country conditions in a garden bed

This is a Sydney sandstone plant, at home on exposed headlands and ridges, so the conditions it wants are poor rather than rich. Full sun is the requirement. Sandy or gravelly soil, sharp drainage and salt wind all suit it, and the roots resent being planted into a heavy clay hollow that stays wet through winter. Set it well clear of paths, doorways and pool edges, because the leaves are rigid with hard edges and people brush past them. Allow the full width of the rosette plus room for the clump to build, and do not crowd it with soft planting that will simply be swallowed. The one failure mode is shade. In a dim courtyard or under a dense canopy the rosette opens out, loses its shape and will not throw a spike, and no feeding regime fixes that. Give it open sky. Plants also need to reach a fair size before they flower at all, so if the spike is the point, buy close to the scale you want rather than starting small.

Gymea lily against hakea and cycad

In this batch the closest call is pincushion hakea. Both are natives for hot, open, well drained positions, but the hakea is a shrubby frame that earns its attention for a few months when the crimson flowers bring birds in, while the gymea lily is a year round shape that happens to flower. Cycas revoluta is the other architectural option and the more formal one: rigid, symmetrical and even, where the gymea is coarse, asymmetric and much larger in the leaf. Choose the gymea lily for scale on a bank, a driveway or a wide bed; choose the cycad when the planting has to look measured and repeatable.

Cutting the spent spike

There is no pruning in the usual sense. Cut the flower stem off close to the base once the head has finished and dried, using a pruning saw, and pull or cut away the oldest leaves as they collapse so the rosette keeps a clean outline. Wear gloves and long sleeves, since the leaf edges will open skin. Feeding is light work: a slow release native fertiliser in early spring is plenty, and plants in poor sandy ground do better with a little than with a lot. Mulch with coarse gravel or leaf litter rather than a heavy compost that packs down around the crown. It is a genuinely low maintenance plant once it is in the right spot.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 11 sizes, from 125mm up to 100L, priced from $19.95 to $1529.00 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 Australian native trees.