The trees and hedges that cope with a Canberra winter
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Canberra gardens are planted twice. Once in spring, with hope, and again the following spring to replace what the frost took.
After a year of sending plants to the ACT, 598 of them across 64 orders, we can see which plants come back for a second order and which do not, and the pattern is clear: Canberra gardeners buy structure that survives winter, and they buy it for pots and borders as much as for the ground.
Start with the hedge
The hedges that hold in Canberra are the ones that evolved in cold places.
Japanese box and English box take hard frost without a mark and clip into the formal lines the older suburbs are built around; where the humidity of the coast makes them sulk, the dry cold of the tablelands is exactly what they want. Photinia gives a taller hedge with red new growth, and laurustinus viburnum flowers through winter when nothing else does.
For a native hedge, coastal rosemary is the surprise: it comes from windswept headlands but takes frost to about minus 7 and clips into a grey hedge that asks for nothing, and it was in the ACT’s top six plants on our books last year. Our hedging and screening range at nurserynearme.com.au is sorted by height, so a knee-high border and a two-storey screen are a click apart.
Then the trees
Deciduous trees are the Canberra choice because they earn their place twice: shade in January, sun on the house in July.
Ornamental pears, the Capital and Chanticleer forms, are the street trees of the newer suburbs for good reason, upright and frost proof with white spring blossom and red autumn colour. Crepe myrtle flowers through the hottest weeks and takes frost once established. Japanese maples want shelter from the hot north westerly and afternoon shade, and reward it with the best autumn colour in the garden. Crab apples, claret ash and silver birch all belong here too.
Our trees range at nurserynearme.com.au carries each of them from a 200mm pot to an advanced size on a truck.
What the ACT buys that nobody else does
Three things stood out in the Canberra orders.
Bay trees, which take frost, live in pots for years and supply the kitchen. Liriope and mondo grass, the evergreen edging plants that sit under deciduous trees and look tidy through the leafless months. And pots and containers as the most common purpose of all, which fits a city of courtyards, townhouses and renters who take the garden with them.
Three rules for the first winter
Plant in October after the last frost, or in March so the roots are down before the cold; a plant that goes in during May spends winter standing still. Water deeply once a week through the first summer and mulch 75 millimetres deep, kept off the stems. And cover anything tender for its first two winters: a frost cloth thrown over a young hedge on a clear still night is the difference between a hedge and a replacement order.
Everything above is delivered to Canberra from the growers who grow it, with a free care guide written for the climate zone and a 30-day healthy plant guarantee. The Canberra delivery details are at nurserynearme.com.au.
