Ornamental Eucalyptus? You must be kidding!

Warning: ironies below

As you well know, Eucalyptus are those little diverse Australian trees, that all become giants, invasive unestoppable weeds, they deplete soil and lower watertables, so aggresive nothing grows under them, so poisonous nothing can grow where they once grew, as much troublegiving as unable to be planted in gardens because their roots spread for a hundred meters and can cause havoc to anything growing in their way. They have nil or low ornamental potential and in addition they are not cold hardy!

Pruned compact cold hardy Eucalyptus in big containers for ornamental use / Eucalipto ornamental resistente a la helada en grandes contenedores /GIT Forestry Consulting, Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal. Lugo, Galicia, Spain, España

Fig 1: Example of compact growth in sculpted cold hardy Eucalyptus grown in big containers

Minilyptus, cold hardy sculpted ornamental Eucalyptus for medium sized gardens / Minilyptus, eucalipto ornamental esculpido y resistenete a la helada para jardines medianos / GIT Forestry Consulting, Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal. Lugo, Galicia, España, Spain

Fig 2: Example of garden performance for Minilyptus, sculpted for mallee growth habit. Planted in company of red flowering Callistemon and with an understorey of different Hebe cultivars.

Eucalyptus perriniana, cold hardy sculpted ornamental Eucalyptus for medium sized gardens / Eucalipto giratorio, eucalipto ornamental esculpido y resistenete a la helada para jardines medianos / GIT Forestry Consulting, Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal. Lugo, Galicia, España, Spain

Fig 3: Example of distinct connate juvenile foliage and flower buds of the Spinning Gum Tree.

Eucalyptus gunnii, cold hardy sculpted ornamental Eucalyptus for medium sized gardens / Eucalipto de la Sidra, eucalipto ornamental esculpido y resistenete a la helada para jardines medianos / GIT Forestry Consulting, Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal. Lugo, Galicia, España, Spain

Fig 4: Example of heavily pruned (pollarded) Eucalyptus gunnii cultivated from a potted specimen and planted too close to infrastructures. Obligatorily submitted to size control operations and hence avoid excessive height growth and root spread.

So as you can see, our main recommendation is wihtout any doubt that you please keep growing Leylandii and forget about Eucalyptus as ornamentals.

Especially because in addition to the examples of non ornamental foliage displayed above, you can also check that their boring bark and too similar flower buds are not at all worth of cultivation from an aesthetic point of view! So we do not need to consider their flowers at all.

Summing up, the right thing would be sending them all back to Australia, because as you well know, eucalypts cannot make good timber either!