Xylosma senticosum

Xylosma senticosum is a dense evergreen shrub from east Asia with small, hard, glossy leaves on wiry stems, and the species name tells you the rest: senticosum means thorny. Short spines sit along the branches, and a hedge run of it becomes genuinely difficult to push through. It shears well enough to hold a tidy clipped face, and the fine leaf lets it read as a formal hedge rather than a thicket. It is grown as a boundary hedge, a barrier against stock and intruders, and a screening line.

Placement decides whether you regret it

It is adaptable across temperate and subtropical Australia and undemanding once the roots are down. Give it soil that drains freely, improved with compost on heavy ground, and steady water through the first year or two while it establishes; after that it asks for very little. Set plants 45 to 60cm apart for a solid hedge line. The failure mode is not cultural but positional. Planted along a path, a driveway where car doors open, a washing line run or anywhere children play, the spines turn a good hedge into a permanent nuisance, and a hedge that is unpleasant to maintain stops getting maintained and goes to thicket. Decide the position with the spines in mind, not the leaf. One further note: it is easily muddled in the trade with Xylosma congestum, the shiny xylosma more commonly sold for screening, which is a larger and far less thorny plant. Check the label if barrier quality is the reason you are buying. Start trimming from the first year rather than letting it run up and cutting back later, since those spines make a heavy renovation cut a genuinely unpleasant day.

Barrier hedge or formal edging

The other clipped evergreen here is African boxwood, and the two split the work cleanly. Myrsine has no spines, a finer clipped surface and a lower natural habit, which makes it the one for low hedges, edging and topiary in pots where people brush past it constantly. Xylosma is for the boundary you want to be impassable: a fence line, a rear laneway, a side return where a gate has been jumped. Plenty of gardens use both, the thorny hedge on the perimeter and the soft one inside it. If bare soil at the foot of a boundary hedge bothers you, kidney weed will knit across it. Where a gate, a tap or a meter box has to stay reachable, leave a gap in the Xylosma and fill it with something soft.

Shearing a thorny hedge safely

Shear it twice a year: once in late spring after the first flush has hardened, and again in late summer, which leaves enough of the season for the cut faces to green over before winter. A light third pass is fine in a warm district. Wear gauntlet gloves, long sleeves and eye protection, and rake the clippings up properly, because otherwise the spines end up in bare feet and paws for months. Feed with a complete slow release fertiliser in early spring and again after the summer shear, watered in, with mulch over the root zone kept back from the stems.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 2 sizes, from 200mm up to 300mm, priced from $29.95 to $92.95 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 when to plant in Australia.