Brush Cherry Syzygium australe Big Red (Eugenia australis)

Big Red is grown for the intensity of its new growth. Each flush breaks a deep red over the older canopy and stays coloured well past the point where an unnamed seedling brush cherry has already gone green, so a hedge cut two or three times a year carries a red face over a dark body for much of the growing season. The frame underneath is upright and branched right down to soil level, which is what lets it hold a clean clipped edge from the ground up rather than standing on bare legs. It is used as a trimmed privacy hedge along boundaries, driveways and pool fences.

Coastal and near coastal country suits it

Brush cherry is a warm temperate to subtropical plant, and Big Red is a safe bet in coastal and near coastal gardens from south east Queensland down through New South Wales. It grows in Victoria, the ACT and the settled parts of South Australia and Western Australia, where what you plan around is a cold first winter or two on young stock rather than anything the mature plant will complain about. Light drives the colour here. In open sun the red comes through dense and even; on a face that only sees a few hours it still flushes, but the growth is looser and the colour paler. Give it ground that drains, work compost through sand or heavy clay before planting, and mulch over the root zone without banking it against the stems. Space plants 750mm to 1 metre apart for a continuous run.

The trap is trimming little and often all summer

Big Red is bought for a flush, which tempts people into tipping the hedge lightly every few weeks from September through to March to keep triggering more of it. That single habit undoes the plant. Psyllid works on soft young leaves, and a hedge never allowed to harden off carries a supply of them without a break, so the pimpling never clears out of the face. It thins the colour as well, because a hedge nipped constantly pushes many small weak flushes instead of a few strong ones. Cut in two or three decisive passes instead, let each flush colour up and harden fully before the next cut, and take pimpled growth off the plant and out from under it rather than leaving it sitting in the hedge.

Which colour, and at what height

This range splits on which colour you get and how tall the plant will carry it. Plum Magic flushes plum purple on a compact frame, so it belongs on low hedges, borders and in pots. Winter Lights puts bronze and orange on its outer growth through the cool months instead of in warm season bursts. Big Red is the full height screening plant of the three and the one that reddens with every push through spring and summer. Choose it for a fence height or taller hedge that changes colour as it grows, and drop to Plum Magic if the finished run sits below waist height. Other clipped options sit in hedges.

Feeding a colour hedge

Colour on this cultivar is a function of vigour, so a hungry Big Red gives you short dull flushes and a thin face. Put a controlled release feed down as growth first moves in spring, repeat it once the first summer flush has hardened, and water it through both times. Keep the mulch layer topped up so the shallow surface roots do not dry out and stall in January. Formative cuts in the first two seasons count for more than anything done later, because they set the low branching the finished face depends on.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 3 sizes, from 200mm up to 300mm, priced from $29.95 to $109.00 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 choosing a lilly pilly.