Another native alternative: Bottle Brush instead of Photinia

Red Alert™ Callistemon viminalis ‘KPS38’ PBR.

Ozbreed has another native alternative to a popular exotic plant, Photinia is used widely in Australia as a screening hedge. If you’re driving down the road, you are most likely going to spot Photinia at least twice along the way. Its red new growth is almost iconic, but it’s not native!

Red Alert is the perfect native alternative for Photinia. It has deep red new growth and is a nice compact hedge. The benefit of Red Alert over Photinia is that it is low maintenance and needs less pruning to establish a hedge. It also has longer periods of red new growth, lasting up to 2 months in autumn and 2 months in spring! So for one third of the year you will have a showy, red hedge. Red Alert is also more drought and frost tolerant than Photinia, as you would expect from an Aussie native.

Red Alert grows 2-2.4m high x 1.5-2m wide if left unpruned. It can be pruned from 50cm-2m high x 40cm-1.5m wide. To keep a tight hedge it is recommended to prune at least once a year depending on the size of hedge. Prune after red new growth in either autumn or spring.

With all of Ozbreeds new native alternatives to commonly used exotic plants, not all native gardens and landscapes have to be the typical grasses and shrubs, and not all formal gardens have to have only exotics.