Weeping Fig Ficus benjamina

Weeping fig makes a dense rounded dome of small glossy leaves carried on gracefully drooping branchlets, and it is a fixture in Australian living rooms. Outdoors in warm districts it becomes a large tree with a heavy, far ranging root system, which is a very different proposition from the plant most people know. It is also clipped into hedges and standards through Queensland and northern New South Wales, where it holds a dense face with regular trimming and fills a boundary quickly.

Bright, steady, and nowhere near the sewer

In the ground it suits frost free coastal and subtropical gardens in full sun to part shade with moderate water, and growth is fast. That is exactly where the trouble starts. It has a long record of lifting paving, blocking sewer lines and working into footings, and councils along the east coast have spent serious money removing established specimens from residential streets. Keep it well clear of services, pools and buildings, or keep it in a pot where the root run is contained. In cooler cities it lives in a pot that comes under cover for winter, or stays in a warm bright room year round. Indoors the failure mode is different and far more common, and it is leaf drop. Move the plant, let the root ball dry out and then drown it, or sit it beside a heater or an air conditioning vent, and it answers by shedding leaves in handfuls. Choose a bright position with indirect light, water when the top of the mix dries, and then leave it where it is. Give a relocated plant a fortnight to settle before you decide anything is wrong.

Benjamina beside the other pot figs

Against Fiddle Leaf Fig, benjamina carries many small leaves rather than a few large ones, so it recovers from damage far more readily and reads as a soft green mass instead of a sculptural outline. It is also the easier of the two to clip into a ball, a standard or a hedge. Against Hill's Weeping Fig, it is the softer and more pendulous plant, less suited to a razor edged pleached panel and more suited to a rounded informal shape, and it sheds more when conditions shift. Take benjamina for a forgiving indoor green mass or a warm climate hedge, and hillii when the geometry has to stay sharp. Either way, the container is doing the containing. It sits with our other indoor plants.

Trimming and feeding a weeping fig

Prune in spring and through summer while it is growing, which is when cuts close fastest and regrowth fills in. Indoor plants take a light shaping trim once or twice a year and tolerate having the leader shortened to force branching, while hedges outdoors want a trim every couple of months through the warm season. Wear gloves, as the sap is a skin irritant. Feed potted plants monthly through the growing season with a liquid fertiliser at label rate, or use a controlled release product in spring, and stop feeding over winter. Repot every second or third year, and check for scale and mealybug where light is low.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 6 sizes, from 125mm up to 45L, priced from $19.95 to $299.00 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.