Japanese Maple Acer palmatum Sango Kaku

The reason to plant Sango Kaku shows itself after the leaves fall. Young stems colour coral red through winter and hold it until the tree leafs out again, so a bare plant against a rendered wall, or lit from below, does real work in the months when the rest of the garden is not. Spring foliage is light green with reddish edges, and autumn moves to gold and yellow rather than the deep reds of purple leaved forms. The habit is upright and vase shaped, taller than most Japanese maples.

Cold winters make the colour

Part shade to full sun is the range, and full sun works in a cool district, but the coral colour comes up stronger where winters are properly cold, which puts the tablelands, the Southern Highlands, inland Victoria and the Adelaide Hills ahead of warm coastal gardens. It is fully deciduous and cold hardy, so winter itself carries no risk and the whole question sits in summer exposure. Give it deep, free draining, slightly acidic soil with organic matter, moderate water year round and reliable water through summer, and mulch deeply. The failure mode is hot dry wind. In inland or hot gardens the leaf edges crisp by late summer without afternoon shelter and a genuine soak during heatwaves, and a scorched tree carries brown margins into autumn instead of clean gold. The second thing to understand is that the coral sits in the current season's wood, so a tree left entirely unpruned slowly loses its winter effect as older branches fade to grey brown. Position it where you will actually see it in winter.

Coral stems, or foliage colour all summer

The three Japanese maples in this range solve different problems. Sango Kaku is the winter plant and the tallest of the three, and its autumn is gold rather than crimson. Inaba Shidare is the opposite, a low weeping mound holding deep purple red foliage right through summer and finishing scarlet, with nothing to show once it is bare. Elegans sits between them, upright with large deeply cut green leaves turning orange to red. Choose Sango Kaku for a courtyard or entry you look at through winter, and one of the others if the display only needs to run from spring to autumn. None of the three will take a hot dry western aspect, so shelter is the shared requirement whichever you pick. See the whole Japanese maple group.

Cutting for coral, and feeding

Prune in late autumn or early winter while the plant is dormant, and avoid late winter and early spring cuts, when maples bleed sap. Take out some of the oldest, greyest wood every couple of years to keep fresh coral stems coming, cutting back to a strong younger shoot rather than shearing the outline. Remove dead and crossing branches at the same time. Feed once in early spring with a slow release fertiliser for acid loving plants at label rate, because heavy nitrogen gives soft growth that scorches in the first hot wind and dulls the stem colour. Keep mowers away from the coral stems, since scarred bark does not recover.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 8 sizes, from 250mm up to 100L, priced from $71.95 to $779.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. Every size here is established stock rather than a starter plant, so this line is intended for immediate effect rather than for growing on. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to growing Japanese maples in Australian gardens.