Tell us your boundary length, desired final height, and site conditions. We'll recommend suitable species, work out spacing and plant count, and estimate time to canopy closure.
Hedging is one of the few parts of garden design where small decisions at planting time compound for decades. Plant too far apart and you wait years for closure, sometimes watching gaps you can't fill. Plant too close and you force species to compete, producing leggy plants with bare bases. Pick a species unsuited to your climate and nothing you do to the spacing will rescue it.
This planner exists to short-circuit those mistakes. It starts from the real constraints — your boundary length, target height, and site conditions — and works out which species will actually deliver the hedge you're imagining, at what spacing, and roughly how long you'll wait before canopy closes.
The single most common mistake in hedge planting is over-dense spacing. Species-specific spacing recommendations exist because individual plants each need enough root and canopy room to develop properly. A Syzygium 'Resilience' planted at 60 cm centres will look like a hedge quickly but crowd itself into thin foliage within five years. At 80 cm centres it takes a few extra months to close but thrives for decades.
The recommended spacings we use are for hedging installations specifically — closer than garden spacing (where you want each plant to express its natural form) but not so tight that plants fight each other. They're based on what Australian nurseries and landscape contractors use in practice.
Every species has a mature range, not a single height. A plant listed as "3–6 m" will reach about 4 m as a reasonably-maintained hedge, can be trimmed down to 2.5 m with commitment, or allowed to reach closer to 6 m if unpruned. The planner filters first by whether your desired height falls within the species' natural comfort zone. If you want a 1.2 m low hedge, the system skips species that naturally want to be 5 m tall — you could hold them shorter, but it's a fight.
Style isn't just aesthetic. Formal hedges need species that tolerate regular shearing and produce dense regrowth — Buxus, Syzygium, Photinia, Pittosporum tobira 'Miss Muffet'. Informal hedges let each plant keep more of its natural form; you still prune but less aggressively — Grevillea, Callistemon, Leptospermum, most Camellia sasanqua. Australian natives have the added benefit of supporting local wildlife and generally need less water once established. The planner respects your choice and only suggests species that work for the style you want.
This is the estimate people most often get wrong. Nursery marketing talks about "fast growing" in vague terms; the reality depends on starting size, spacing, soil preparation, watering, and climate. Our time-to-closure estimates assume advanced container stock (the sizes Cape Nursery typically supplies), recommended spacing, decent soil prep, and consistent establishment watering for the first two summers. Slower, smaller-container plantings will take longer.
Climate zone is the hardest filter because zones aren't uniform. Byron Bay, where Cape Nursery is based, is subtropical but within cooee of temperate conditions — we can grow Photinia and Buxus alongside Syzygium and Murraya. Brisbane proper is subtropical-edging-tropical. Sydney is warm-temperate with microclimates. The planner accepts species that work across the border of your zone rather than strict zone-only matching — but where a species is clearly outside its comfort range, it's excluded. If you're on a climate boundary, try running the planner twice with adjacent zones and compare.
Treat the output as a shortlist, not a prescription. The species, count, and spacing are the starting point for a conversation with your landscaper or the nursery. Two things the planner can't see: your specific microclimate (frost pocket at the bottom of the garden, wind tunnel between buildings), and your existing soil (heavy clay, sandy, saline). Walk the line with your shortlist, check for those local conditions, and the final choice will be stronger.
For trade customers, get in touch with the species name and quantity from the plan and we'll quote advanced sizes and availability. For home gardeners, take the plan to your local retail nursery — the botanical names give you the specificity needed to order accurately, even if the brand selection varies.
Spacing depends on the species — not on a generic rule. Dense small-leaved formal hedging plants like Buxus go in at 30 cm centres. Medium-vigour screening species like Syzygium australe 'Resilience' sit at 80 cm centres. Tall tree-form screens like Waterhousea or Hill's Fig need 150–200 cm spacing because individual plants reach much greater width. The planner uses the species-specific spacing recommended by Australian and international nurseries for each plant — closer is rarely better.
With advanced container stock (200 mm or larger), decent soil preparation, and consistent watering for the first two summers, fast-growing species like Syzygium, Ficus microcarpa 'Flash', and Callistemon cultivars reach canopy closure in around 2 years. Moderate growers like Camellia sasanqua, Viburnum, and native Westringia take 2–3 years. Slow-growing classics like Buxus and Taxus can take 4–6 years, which is why those hedges are so prized — they're slow because they're long-lived.
For formal hedges — single species. Uniform growth rate and leaf texture is the whole point, and mixing species usually ends in one outpacing the others. For informal screens and native plantings, mixing two or three compatible species produces richer texture, staggered flowering, and better wildlife value. If you're going to mix, pick species with similar growth rates and spacing requirements.
The terms overlap. Broadly: a hedge is a clipped, maintained row of plants trained to a defined form — typically waist-to-head height for a property boundary. A screen is taller, often less intensively pruned, and primarily about blocking sightlines rather than defining a boundary. Screens typically use larger species like Waterhousea, Lophostemon, or Hill's Fig. Our planner handles both — if you enter a height above 4 metres we're effectively planning a screen.
You need a species whose mature height stays safely below the line, and you need to check local utility clearance rules — which vary by state and energy provider. For most domestic power lines (around 7–8 m), hedges topped at 3 m are safe. Don't rely on pruning to keep a 15 m species short indefinitely; choose a naturally-compact species instead. Filter the planner to your target height and it'll only show species that stay in range.
Usually one of three causes. Over-dense planting — plants competed, lost their lower foliage, and now can't regenerate it. Incorrect pruning shape — hedges need to be clipped slightly wider at the base than the top (a mild A-frame) so light reaches the lower leaves. Species choice — some species naturally shed lower branches as they mature. For low skirts, pick species with genuinely dense basal habit like Syzygium 'Resilience', Westringia, or Photinia.
Advanced container stock (200 mm pots and above) establishes faster, closes the hedge line sooner, and is less vulnerable to the first-summer losses that plague tube stock. It costs more per plant but typically saves 12–18 months of establishment time. For short hedges, the extra cost is small relative to your time waiting. Cape Nursery specialises in advanced sizes because most of our trade customers need fast visual results on client sites.
Not directly — soil varies too much site-by-site for a generic tool to address. Most species in the database tolerate a reasonable range of soil conditions if drainage is adequate. If you know your site has specific issues (heavy clay, alkaline limestone, salt contamination, persistent waterlogging), treat the planner output as a starting shortlist and cross-reference with a local landscaper or the source nursery about each species' soil tolerance.
Cape Nursery grows around 97 wholesale species and has them flagged in the results. The broader hedge database includes another 40+ species that are useful options for specific climates or styles (particularly cold-temperate deciduous hedges, European classics, and regional natives outside Cape's catchment) but aren't in Cape's range. Those are there so the planner works for people in climates or design situations Cape doesn't serve directly — you get a useful species name even if Cape can't supply it.