New Zealand Flax Phormium Bronze Warrior

Bronze Warrior is grown for vertical line. The leaves are broad, stiff and upright, in deep bronze to purple black tones that hold their colour right through the year and read hard against grey foliage, gravel, timber or pale render. It builds into a substantial fountain shaped clump rather than staying compact, which makes it a feature plant rather than a filler: one in a courtyard pot, three through a wide bed, or a run of them along an exposed coastal boundary where softer plants shred.

Siting Bronze Warrior in wind, salt and clay

New Zealand flax earns its keep in the hard positions. It takes full sun through to part shade, tolerates salt laden wind on coastal blocks, holds its shape in exposed gardens where grasses flatten, and copes with cold better than most architectural plants sold in Australia. Leaf colour deepens with more light, so a plant in heavy shade drifts greener and flops. Water is low to moderate once it is away. In containers, use a large pot and a free draining mix, since a small pot stunts the clump. Drainage is the one thing it will not forgive. In poorly drained clay, water sits in the crown over winter and rots the clump out from the middle, and by the time the centre leaves pull away freely the plant is usually gone. On clay, plant it high on a raised mound or in a bed lifted with coarse compost and gravel rather than digging a hole that becomes a sump. Give it room on the plan too. Squeezed into a narrow strip against a path, it grows over the edge and gets sheared, which ruins the fountain form permanently.

Bronze Warrior or a native clump

Within this range the choice is usually against Blue Flax Lily. Dianella is the plant for covering ground: soft leaves, low water, planted in dozens, spreading by rhizome to knit a bed together. Bronze Warrior does the opposite job, standing as one deliberate coloured mass you count rather than measure by the square metre. It also holds its shape in wind and salt where Dianella lies over in an exposed front garden. If you want the same architectural weight in a dry gravel garden with no irrigation at all, Agave geminiflora gives you a spiky hemisphere instead of an upright fan, and it will not brown off in a long dry summer the way a phormium can. The rest of the range sits under New Zealand flax.

Tidying leaves and watching for reversion

Do not shear a phormium. Pull spent outer leaves away from the base by hand, or cut them low inside the clump, working around it a few times a year so the outline stays intact. Shearing the whole plant flat leaves a blunt, squared off clump for a full season. Cut flower stems out at the base once they finish. The other job is reversion: if a plain green shoot appears in the clump it grows faster than the bronze foliage and will take over, so trace it down and remove it at the base as soon as you see it. Feed once in early spring with a balanced slow release fertiliser and leave it alone otherwise.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 3 sizes, from 200mm up to 300mm, priced from $29.95 to $119.00 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 low water gardens.