The best hedge plants for Melbourne gardens.

The right hedge is the one you’ll still like trimming in five years. Here’s how to choose for height, speed, frost, shade and upkeep.

Updated 9 October 2026

A golden retriever running across a lawn past a hedge (stock photo)

The short answer: choose for the height you want and the trimming you’re willing to do. Coastal rosemary (westringia) makes a native hedge of about 1.5 metres. Lilly pillies make taller screens, but many grow fast and need regular trims. Slow growers such as Camellia sasanqua take years to fill in but need less cutting. Whatever you choose, check it isn’t an environmental weed in your area: sweet pittosporum, privet and cotoneaster are all on Victoria’s advisory list.

Pick for height, speed and upkeep

Trimming a hedge with a hedge trimmer (stock photo)

Start with three questions.

How tall? A hedge kept at 1 to 1.5 metres is a different plant from a 3-metre screen. Gardening Australia’s rule of thumb: a plant labelled 2 to 3 metres will hedge down to roughly 1.5 to 2.5 metres.
How fast? Fast growers fill a gap sooner but need trimming more often. Gardening Australia says hedges can take three to seven years to become fully established, so choose for the long run, not just next summer.
How much trimming? Most established hedges need two trims a year, and fast growers need more. Our guide to when to trim hedges in Melbourne covers the timing, and our hedge trimming service can take it off your hands.

Then check the spot. Is it in full sun, part shade or deep shade? Does it get frost? Lilly pillies, for example, generally cope with light frosts only.

Popular hedge plants compared

The details come from Gardening Australia, with Banyule Council’s brochure and VicFlora for the notes on local and weedy plants (see Sources). A dash means our sources gave no figure. Heights are for a clipped hedge and depend on soil, water and trimming.

Plant	Hedge height	Growth	Worth knowing
Coastal rosemary (Westringia fruticosa), native	About 1.5 m	–	White or mauve flowers on and off through the year. Tip prune in autumn
Lilly pilly (Syzygium), native	2 to 3 m for ‘Cherry Surprise’	Many are very fast	Light frosts only. Sun or part shade. Some are bred to resist psyllids
Hop bush (Dodonaea viscosa), native	Can be kept at about 2 m (grows to 4 to 5 m)	–	Tough once established and easy to prune. Indigenous to parts of Melbourne
Laurustinus (Viburnum tinus)	Up to 4 m, can be kept much lower	–	Hardy in sun or shade. Winter flowers. Birds can spread it into nearby bush
Camellia sasanqua	–	Slow: 7 to 10 years to a thick hedge	Can last at least 100 years. Flowers each autumn
Camellia japonica	–	–	Most are better suited to shade. Likes morning sun and shelter from afternoon sun
Magnolia ‘Little Gem’	–	Slow	Fragrant white flowers, dark green leaves
Pittosporum tenuifolium	–	Fast: about 1 m a year	Hard work to keep trimmed. Not the weedy sweet pittosporum
‘Leighton Green’ cypress	About 3 m	–	A conifer: most don’t regrow from old wood, so keep trims light
Silverberry (Elaeagnus × submacrophylla)	Screens to about 3 m	Vigorous	Takes a hard prune

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Native hedges

Coastal rosemary and grevillea. Westringia makes a neat hedge of about 1.5 metres, and grevillea such as ‘Misty Pink’ flowers almost constantly and makes a good screen when trimmed. Both suit a tip prune in autumn, up to the end of April.
Lilly pillies make dense hedges and screens in sun or part shade. Many grow very fast, so plan on regular trims. Psyllids can cause pimples and deformed leaves on many lilly pillies, so choose a resistant one. Gardening Australia names ‘Cherry Surprise’, bred to resist them, and the creek lilly pilly Acmena smithii var. minor.
Local indigenous shrubs. A Banyule brochure suggests indigenous plants such as wedge-leaf hop bush (Dodonaea viscosa), sweet bursaria (Bursaria spinosa) and hedge wattle (Acacia paradoxa) in place of weedy shrubs. A local indigenous nursery can tell you what grows naturally in your suburb.

A bonus with many natives, such as bottlebrushes, correas and lilly pillies: if they get straggly, a hard cut back to a point with new shoots can rejuvenate them.

Fast growers, and the catch

Fast growers give you a screen sooner, but there’s a catch.

More trimming. Gardening Australia notes many lilly pillies are very fast growing and may need regular pruning. Pittosporum tenuifolium can put on about a metre a year. The owner of a Dandenong Ranges garden with around 50 hedges told the show that fast growers such as pittosporum are hard work, and slower ones are better.
Shorter lives. In one Gardening Australia segment, a purple hop bush windbreak grew quickly to about 3 metres, then died after three years. The same garden owner avoids short-lived plants such as lavender and rosemary (the herb, not coastal rosemary) for hedges.
Slow can pay off. Camellia sasanqua takes 7 to 10 years to form a thick hedge, but it can last at least a hundred years.

Need privacy sooner? Plant closer together so the gaps fill faster. More on spacing below.

Plants to avoid

Some popular hedge plants spread from gardens into bushland and are listed as environmental weeds. Victoria’s advisory list, prepared by the Arthur Rylah Institute in 2018, rates all of these as very high risk:

Sweet pittosporum (Pittosporum undulatum): native to Victoria, but a weed outside its natural range
Privet (several Ligustrum species)
Cotoneaster (several species)
Common olive (Olea europaea), sometimes grown as a quick hedge
Firethorn (Pyracantha)
Portugal laurel (Prunus lusitanica)
Coast tea-tree (Leptospermum laevigatum): native to Victoria, but a weed outside its natural range
Myrtle-leaf milkwort (Polygala myrtifolia)
Mirror bush (Coprosma repens)

Banyule Council’s weed brochure also lists hawthorn and boxthorn. VicFlora, the Royal Botanic Gardens’ guide to Victoria’s plants, records laurustinus going wild in a few places, usually in moist forest next to gardens.

The state list is advice for land managers rather than a planting ban, and the risk varies from place to place. Before you buy, check your council’s weed list or ask its environment team, especially if your garden backs onto bushland or a creek. To spot weeds already in your garden, see common weeds in Melbourne.

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Planting a hedge so it fills in

Gloved hands planting seedlings in a garden bed (stock photo)

Spacing. Gardening Australia’s rule of thumb is to plant about a third of the hedge’s final height apart. So a cypress hedge kept at 3 metres goes in about 1 metre apart. Another method: divide the length of the row by the plant’s expected width and add one. In a Hobart windbreak, plants 2 metres apart took a long time to fill the gaps, so the presenter recommends about 1 metre.
Matching plants. Gardening Australia suggests plants of about the same height, from the same batch, with foliage right down to the base, so the hedge doesn’t end up with bare legs.
A good start. Hedges get trimmed hard for years, so give them good soil. Gardening Australia suggests mixing compost into the planting soil, planting after seasonal rain and mulching to keep the soil moist. Our guide to the best mulch for Melbourne gardens explains which mulch to use and how to keep it clear of stems.
Prune early. Cut the leading shoot soon after planting and take off some side growth, so the hedge stays thick right down to the ground.
Water within the rules. In Victoria you can water gardens at any time with a hand-held hose fitted with a trigger nozzle, a watering can or a bucket. Watering systems such as sprinklers and drip hoses can only run between 6 pm and 10 am.

Planting and trimming done for you

A new hedge can be part of our planting and landscaping work across Melbourne: clearing the strip, preparing the soil, planting, mulching and edging. Once it’s growing, hedge trimming keeps it at the height and shape you agreed. If you’re redoing the whole front of the house, front yard landscaping ideas for Melbourne is a good place to start.

Text a photo of the spot and your suburb to 0415 386 399, and we’ll talk through what suits it.

From EKO Gardening Solutions. Sources checked on 9 October 2026.

A few useful answers.

Have a question about your own space?
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What's the fastest-growing hedge for Melbourne?

Lilly pillies and Pittosporum tenuifolium are among the quickest. Gardening Australia notes the pittosporum can grow about a metre a year. The trade-off is more trimming, and some fast growers don’t live long: a purple hop bush windbreak on one presenter’s farm died after three years.

What hedge grows in shade in Melbourne?

Gardening Australia describes laurustinus (Viburnum tinus) as hardy in full sun or shade, and says most japonica camellias are better suited to shade. Lilly pillies cope with part shade. Laurustinus has gone wild near gardens in parts of Victoria, so check your council’s weed list before you plant it.

How far apart should hedge plants go?

About a third of the hedge’s final height, according to Gardening Australia. For a hedge kept at 3 metres, that’s about 1 metre apart. Plant a little closer if you want it to fill in sooner.

Are there hedge plants I shouldn't plant?

Yes. Victoria’s advisory list of environmental weeds rates sweet pittosporum, privet, cotoneaster, common olive and firethorn as very high risk. Check your council’s weed list before you buy.

Sources

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