Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus
Grows fast and tall unless coppiced in spring — and it wants no phosphorus at all.
- Type
- Tree · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Blue-green · Silver and gray
- Sunlight
- Full sun, out in the open.
- Watering
- Water it while young; a settled tree handles drought.
- Feeding
- Keep phosphorus away from it; feeding is rarely needed.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- Coppice in spring, or simply prune to shape.
- Overwintering
- Young trees want shelter from cold winds.
- Mar–Mar Bud Break
- Mar–May Spring Growth
- May–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Dec Growing
- Jan–Mar Growing
- Plant spacing
- 19 ft 8 in
- In-row spacing
- 19 ft 8 in
- Between rows
- 19 ft 8 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, shallow, wide and opportunistic
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3.5 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 59–79 ft across, about 3–4× the width of the plant
These roots go looking, and what they find is drains, soakaways, footings, paving and the border next door. Give it real distance from anything you would mind being lifted or blocked: the reach below ground is several times what the crown suggests.
Extremely fast, extremely thirsty and shallow-rooted for its height, which is why eucalypts blow over and why they are used to dry out wet ground. Keep them well away from drains, footings and anything you want to keep watered.
The habit is Eucalyptus’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Recorded toxic
Recorded as toxic to cats and dogs by ASPCA.
Both sides name only the genus: our catalog files this as Eucalyptus and the ASPCA row reads Eucalyptus species.
- Psyllids Jumping plant lice that distort and curl new shoots, most familiar on bay and box. Prune out affected tips; healthy plants shrug off light attacks.
- Silver leaf A silvery sheen spreads over leaves of plums and cherries, followed by branch dieback. Prune stone fruit only in summer, when infection risk is lowest.
- Eucalyptus gall wasp
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Psyllids
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Grasses, Lavender, Cistus
Trees, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com