Orange Jessamine Murraya paniculata (Murraya exotica)

Murraya makes a dense evergreen shrub of small glossy leaflets, clothed to the ground and willing to be cut into a formal wall without sulking, which is why it is planted through Queensland and coastal New South Wales. The flowers arrive in flushes: a warm spell after rain, and within a few days a clipped hedge goes from plain green to covered in small white flowers, with a scent that carries far in the evening. Orange red berries follow on unclipped plants, though most are grown as hedging and screening.

Hedging murraya in a frost free garden

Full sun to part shade, with the densest growth and the heaviest flowering in sun. Give it free draining soil improved with compost, and it will grow in most suburban ground provided water does not sit around the roots. For a formal hedge, plant about 60 cm apart, or 70 to 80 cm for a taller informal screen, and start clipping early so the base thickens before the top runs away from you. Cut the finished hedge slightly narrower at the top than the bottom, so the lower growth is not shaded out by the face above it. Cold is the real limit, since murraya resents frost and looks wretched through a cold inland winter, so treat it as a plant for frost free coastal and subtropical gardens rather than the tablelands. The recurring problem, though, is scale. Murraya sits in the citrus family and shares its pests, and scale insects excrete honeydew that sooty mould then colonises, turning a green hedge black from the inside out. Check the undersides of leaves through the warm months, treat early with horticultural oil, and keep the hedge open enough for air to move through it. One more point if you back onto bushland: birds spread the berries, the species has naturalised in parts of coastal Queensland and northern New South Wales, and a hedge clipped through the flowering flushes sets almost no fruit.

Murraya against michelia and lemon myrtle

Michelia Fairy White is the alternative for anyone gardening where frost is a fact of winter. It gives a softer, less formal line and a spring flowering, where murraya gives a harder clipped face and repeat flushes of scent through summer. Lemon myrtle covers similar warm climate ground but grows into a much larger, looser plant and carries its scent in the leaf rather than the flower. Choose murraya when the brief is a crisp, formal, evergreen hedge in a warm garden and you are prepared to watch for scale. Where a hedge has to sit under a window and hold a crisp line, it remains the standard through the subtropics. It is one of the fixtures of our hedges range.

Clipping around the flushes

Clip lightly and often through the warm months, ideally just after a flowering flush drops, so you are removing spent flowers rather than the buds forming for the next round. Two or three light cuts a year hold a formal face far better than one hard cut in spring. An overgrown or bare based hedge can be cut back hard in early spring and murraya will reshoot from old wood, though it looks rough for a season while it does. Feed in early spring and again in mid summer with a complete fertiliser spread across the root zone, and keep mulch topped up.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 12 sizes, from 140mm up to 200L, priced from $16.95 to $1159.00 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.