Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Silverana’ – Silver Cider Gum

Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Silverana’

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How to get the best out of your E. ‘Silverana’ 

Specimen Tree: Eucalyptus ‘Silverana’  is recommended for the wider landscape, arboretum collection or avenue planting and for the small, medium and larger garden:

Standard Tree: Planting the tree and running away is an option, but it won’t necessarily give you the best results!  See our guidance notes for growing specimen Eucalyptus in our Help and Advice section.

Handy Tip: With a young 5 litre tree, nip out the growing shoot tips mid-March and end of May, to encourage bushiness. With a 12 litre or 20 litre standard, once planted – maintain the bushy head by pruning on the same dates as above for as long as required to maintain the desired height.

Growing shrub-on-a-stick clipped standard – great as an Evergreen Privacy Screening Tree for the smaller garden: this is an opportunity to grow Eucalyptus ‘Silverana’ in a confined space and control its overall size.  The silver foliage bounces light back to the viewer, acting like net curtains – preventing the observer seeing through the foliage to the other side.

You can produce a small tree on a trunk with a height of anywhere between 2.4m (8ft) and 4m (12ft).  Prune on March 18th and again end of May to maintain bushiness and compact habit.

Growing a multi-stemmed rounded bush or tree: Eucalyptus ‘Silverana’ responds well to pollarding, (once it has attained a trunk of 50mm in diameter) and readily produces a multi-stemmed specimen.

Why would you want to do this?

• Screening: to grow a tree with more body or ‘mass’ of branches and foliage for screening purposes. Once grown back up to its full potential, it will now have several main trunks with many branches carrying lots of leaves.
• Interesting form:  to create an attractive multi-stemmed architectural tree, especially if it has exceptional bark
• Control height: usefully maintain your Euc anywhere between 2.4m (8ft) and 7m (20ft), but genetically it will want to grow taller if ignored.

To produce your own multi-stem from a young tree, keep nipping out the shoot tip ends between March and June. Once the trunk has reached 50mm in diameter (usually one growing season), pollard a mature specimen down to 1m tall in March. It will take 10 weeks to re-sprout and then grow into a bushy shrub. Thereafter, maintain by trimming shoot tips during March to mid-July. Avoid pruning between August and February.

Remember: No grass, no weeds and a thick bark chip mulch, to a depth of 150 mm (6 inches) are essential to assist with good establishment. Our research trials have demonstrated that grass around the trunk of Eucalyptus prevent the trees from quickly establishing and can completely stop them from growing.

Pot Culture outdoors:

Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Silverana’ is an excellent subject for container growing especially as a multi-stemmed shrub. Pot on at the recommended intervals and feed and water copiously during the growing season. Lack of water will result in it becoming brown and crispy…not a good look!

Over winter conditions for Eucalyptus in pots – protect from frosts at around +5°C, provide protection, good light and water twice a week.

For information on how to successfully grow Eucs in pots, visit our Blog entitled ‘How to grow a Eucalyptus in a pot and keep it alive!’

 Floral Art:  Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Silverana’ has all the hallmarks of being great for cut foliage and will be added to our ‘Cut foliage’ list.  We recommend harvesting prior to the hard winter frosts to avoid tip burn. Summer harvesting may be an option; this is being evaluated in our trials.

For information on how to grow cut foliage – see our Book ‘Fantastic Foliage and How to Farm It’ on the sundries page

Hedge-Screens & Windbreaks:  Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Silverana’ is an excellent choice for a hedge-screen as it readily produces sub-lateral shoots – i.e. branches off the side-branches and easily becomes bushy.  This is unusual for most Eucs.

For information on how to grow hedge-screens, see our ‘Help & Advice’ pages

Rural/Agricultural:  

– Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Silverana’  is a good shade tree for livestock to stand under.   Eucalyptus provide a cool environment for horses, cattle, llamas, sheep to shelter from the sun on hot days, as the mass evaporation of water through the leaves creates a cool shady canopy beneath. Best grown in a group of trees to provide it with protection from exposure.

Ecology:  

– Bees. All Eucalyptus produce flowers with nectar and pollen. Eucalyptus ‘Silverana’ usefully flowers in June/July providing foraging for honey-bees and other pollinating insects

– Habitat creation and Game Cover:  this variety lends itself to providing good trouble-free habitat creation for wildlife and game cover, when planted in groups of trees.

Birds enjoy roosting in Eucalyptus trees and Pheasants like rootling around underneath them.

Environmental:

– Growing on the Coast: We have no experience of growing Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Silverana’  in a coastal environment.  I suspect it may do well in milder coastal districts, when grown a mile or two inland of the sea, but this needs trialling.  Do get in touch if you are giving this a go and let us know how you get on.

– Drying up wet soils.  We have no experience as yet of growing Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Silverana’  in seriously boggy ground, but will be trialling it.  I suspect it will prefer a draining clay soil rather than swampy conditions.  It grows well at Grafton Nursery on our yellow-clay soil.

– Tolerance of cold and exposed growing environments inland:  Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Silverana’ requires a degree of shelter amongst other plants to grow in an open location. No grass, no weeds and a thick bark chip mulch, to a depth of 150 mm (6 inches) are essential to assist with good establishment

– Tolerant of poor stony soils once established   Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Silverana’ does not require a rich soil and can survive in poor, stony soils. It is essential that your Euc. is given our recommended quantity of water for its first 2 growing seasons in your grounds, during its establishment phase, before you abandon it to its fate.

No grass, no weeds and a thick bark chip mulch, to a depth of 150 mm (6 inches) are essential to assist with good establishment.  The tree needs to grow a good root system before it can survive in dry, challenging conditions.