The Big Screen: Three Native Australian Trees Suitable For Privacy Screening

Home & Garden Blog

Personal privacy is perhaps more important now than ever before, and planting dense screening trees in key areas can be an extremely effective way to keep prying eyes fixed elsewhere. However, while traditional screening trees are as useful as ever, there is a lot to be said for using lesser-known, native Australian trees for your vision-blocking needs. Native trees are naturally much more suited to growing in tough Australian soils than foreign imports and are much more adept at enduring the attentions of native wood-boring insects and grubs. The following native trees are all fine choices for use as screen trees:

Hoop pine (Araucarai cunninghamii)

The hoop pine is a large tree that is ideally suited for use in tall privacy screens. As evergreens, they provide consistent privacy all year round, and they are robust enough to tolerate high winds and inclement weather without dramatic foliage loss. The branches of the hoop pine tend to expand outwards to provide wide, dense screens of foliage, which reduces the overall amount of trees you need to plant for a continuous screen. As an added bonus, these trees also shed edible nuts, and the dense foliage encourages habitation by various birds and butterflies. 

Brush cherry (Syzygium australe)

Another tall tree, the brush cherry also possesses a wide trunk with low-sprouting branches, making it an excellent choice for screens where low-level privacy is particularly important. While wild, rainforest trees can grow to enormous sizes, cultivated trees tend to be much more manageable in size, and their overall height can easily be controlled with occasional pruning. Specialised 'narrow' cultivars have also been developed -- these trees grow tall but without the expansive branch growth of the original tree and are useful for plugging gaps in walls and fences.

Eumundi (Elaeocarpus eumundii)

This small, dense rainforest tree can do double duty as both a small-to-medium sized screen tree and an ornamental plant, and the tree is widely popular for the bronze colour of young leaves and the delicate, highly-scented flowers it produces. Like the brush cherry, eumundi trees grow to enormous sizes in the wild, but commercial cultivars are much smaller, with diminished canopies and smaller root systems. As such, the trees can be planted very closely together to form continuous hedges and can be used to effectively screen smaller gardens and spaces. They are also quite slow growing, allowing you to minimise the amount of time and money spend on trimming and maintenance -- bear in mind, however, that this will probably necessitate buying adult trees (a much more expensive endeavour than planting your own and waiting years for them to grow).

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17 June 2016

Custom Made Items For Your Home and Garden

Hello. My name is Dean and this is my home and garden blog. Last year, I decided I needed to improve the look of my home. I visited several home and garden centres and various different shops but I just couldn't find the items I wanted. I had this dream of creating a really cool and funky look based on an African design I had seen. My friend suggested that I customise the items to create the look I wanted and began to give me some lessons. I really enjoyed the process and I learnt a lot about how to improve your home and garden.