Which lilly pilly is in your garden?
The name covers several Syzygium species and their cultivars, from knee-high hedging to rainforest trees. If the plant tag is gone, photos of the leaves, the new growth and the fruit will help an arborist or a nursery name it, and the name tells you roughly how big it wants to be.
How tall do lilly pillies grow?
| Typical size | Whose figure | |
|---|---|---|
| Syzygium smithii (long sold as Acmena smithii), in gardens | About 8 to 10 m high and 6 m wide | Australian Native Plants Society |
| Syzygium smithii, in nature | Usually 15 to 20 m | Australian Native Plants Society |
| 'Minor' cultivar | About 3 to 3.5 m | Australian Native Plants Society |
| 'Hedgemaster' cultivar | About 1 to 1.5 m | Australian Native Plants Society |
| Syzygium australe, compact forms | Probably no more than 2 m | Australian Native Plants Society |
| Brush cherry (Syzygium paniculatum), as a street tree | 8 to 12 m | City of Sydney |
| Weeping lilly pilly, as a street tree | 18 to 25 m | City of Sydney |
Pimples on the leaves, or rust?
The most serious lilly pilly pest is the lilly pilly psyllid (Trioza eugeniae), which leaves disfiguring pimples on the leaves of susceptible species. Syzygium smithii is rarely affected.
Myrtle rust is the other one to know. It's a fungal disease first found in Australia on the NSW Central Coast in April 2010, and the City of Sydney says severely infected new growth may be stunted. If a whole hedge is struggling, a tree health check is a better first step than cutting harder.
Trimming a lilly pilly hedge yourself
You can
- Clip the sides and top with hand shears or secateurs, as high as you can reach without leaving the ground.
- Trim little and often: the Native Plants Society says Syzygium smithii responds well to pruning and works as a tall hedge.
- Rake fallen fruit off paths and driveways.
- Note where the hedge meets fences, drains and the house, so you can tell an arborist.
Leave to an arborist
- A hedge too tall to trim from the ground; ladders on soft garden beds are how people get hurt.
- Cutting an overgrown hedge back a long way in one go.
- A lilly pilly that has become a tree beside the house, pipes or a boundary.
- Removal and grinding the stumps.
Pipes, boundaries and the neighbours
Bundaberg Regional Council advises planting larger trees, lilly pilly among them, at least 10 metres from sewer pipes. That's planting advice, and we couldn't confirm how lilly pilly roots behave beyond it, so it isn't proof a hedge is in your drains. We also found no reputable source on the right time of year to prune, so we haven't given one.
In NSW, a hedge under the Trees (Disputes Between Neighbours) Act is two or more trees over 2.5 metres high planted together to form a hedge. A neighbour can seek a high hedge order from the Land and Environment Court only where it severely blocks sunlight to a window of their home, or a view from it. Our neighbours' trees guide covers the process.
Can a lilly pilly be protected?
Yes. In the wild, the brush cherry is listed as Endangered in NSW and Vulnerable under national environment law, and a lilly pilly grown into a tree can fall under your council's tree rules like any other. Check before taking one out, starting with our tree removal permits page.
Lilly pillies: what to do next
Keep a hedge at a height you can trim from the ground and it stays a weekend job. If it's already a row of trees, we'd get an arborist to bring it down to a sensible height once, then hold it there with light trims, and we'd only remove it after checking the council's rules.
Want an arborist to look at it?
Tell us the job and your postcode, and a local arborist calls you to talk it through.