Scarlet Honey Myrtle Melaleuca fulgens

Scarlet honey myrtle is an open, upright shrub from the drier inland country of Western Australia, carrying fine grey green leaves crowded along wiry stems. Through spring those stems load up with brush like flower spikes in scarlet, orange or pink, set along the wood rather than only at the tips, and honeyeaters find them within days of the first buds opening. It is planted as a bird attracting feature shrub, an informal screen, or a filler in a windbreak, in hot, sunny, sharply drained gardens.

Drainage first, everything else second

Full sun all day, and soil that water disappears through. Sand, gravelly loam, a raised mound or a slope all suit it, and it wants moving air around the stems rather than a tucked away corner between two fences. Water through the first summer to establish it, then keep water low to moderate. It is well suited to Perth, Adelaide and dry inland gardens, and it can be grown in humid eastern gardens with care and a mound to sit on. It also does well in a large pot of coarse free draining mix, which is the sensible route in a summer rainfall garden where the beds stay damp.

The failure mode is a wet, airless summer in heavy soil. Western Australian melaleucas from dry country die suddenly rather than gradually: the plant looks healthy, then browns off across a fortnight after warm summer rain, and root rot is almost always behind it. There is no cure once it starts. Plant high, do not enrich the hole with manure, keep mulch off the stem, and water in short infrequent runs over summer instead of long regular ones.

Scarlet honey myrtle against the swamp paperbark

The two melaleucas here sit at opposite ends of the genus. Modong is a full sized paperbark tree for open ground that floods in winter, grown for thick creamy bark and shade. Scarlet honey myrtle is a shrub, grown for flower colour and birds, and it needs the sharp drainage that the paperbark can take or leave. Choose the shrub for a garden bed, the tree for a paddock edge, verge or shelterbelt. Neither is a wet site plant in the eastern sense either, since the paperbark takes seasonal flooding and the honey myrtle will not. If the site is humid, coastal and heavy, Photinia robusta is a more forgiving screen, though not a native one. More in the native range.

Tip pruning after the brushes finish

Prune straight after flowering, and prune lightly. Take the spent brushes and a short length of the tip growth behind them off the whole plant, which keeps it leafy low down instead of bare and woody at the base with all the growth up top. Do this every year from the first season, because a plant left to go leggy will not reliably reshoot from old bare wood. Feed with a low phosphorus native fertiliser in early spring, apply it to damp soil and water it in, and keep the mulch coarse and clear of the stem.

Choosing a size

This plant is supplied in one size, 130mm, at $16.95 per plant. The size shown is the pot it arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to coastal planting.