Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’®
How to use in the landscape and/or garden:
How to grow or train it to get the best out of it
Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® is a fabulous, dwarf, bushy, evergreen tree with great credentials and many uses for the garden, large or small.
Fabulous Specimen Tree for the small to medium garden.
Good structural shrub for the wider landscape and also for the smaller garden where you require a smaller bushier evergreen shrub. E. ‘France Bleu’® will look fabulous in a mixed border, bringing cool silvery blue to the planting scheme. An excellent structural evergreen multi-stem small tree or trimmed shrub for the winter garden.
Commercially: a good choice for Garden Designers to specify for projects – grow as a small tree, bushy shrub or in containers
Growing a full-sized standard: planting the tree and running away is an option, but it won’t necessarily give you the best results.
We suggest you tip prune the lateral shoots to encourage bushiness. Keep all the sides shoots as they are building up the strength of the main trunk.
- To grow a large specimen, leave the tree to grow up naturally thereafter.
- For a small tree, tip prune the leader when it reaches 1.2m, thereafter let the head develop. Then prune the tree every March 18th and end of May to keep your tree small and bushy.
For more, see our guidance notes for growing specimen Eucalyptus in our Help and Advice section.
For monthly emails on how and when to prune and care for your Eucalyptus, sign up to our Gumnut Club and we’ll send you the Bush Telegraph – it’s totally free and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Growing shrub-on-a-stick clipped standard: this is an opportunity to grow a Eucalyptus in a confined space like a courtyard and also control its overall size. You can produce a small tree on a trunk with a height of anywhere between 2.4m (8ft) and 4m (12ft). Prune back growth every March 18th or thereabouts and tip prune the annual growth back by up to 90% at the end of May. Light tip pruning can be done again during July, but no later. Don’t prune from August through to February.
Growing a multi-stemmed bush or tree. Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® responds well to pruning but NOT to coppicing as it does not have a lignotuber. ‘France Bleu’ readily produces a multi-stemmed specimen naturally
Q: Why would you want to do this?
A: To create:
- 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
- an attractive multi-stemmed architectural tree, especially if it has exceptional bark
- to control height, whereby your Euc can be usefully maintained anywhere between 2.4m (8ft) and 7m (20ft), but genetically it will want to grow taller if ignored.
REMEMBER: No grass, no weeds and a thick boring 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 x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® can be successfully grown as a multi-stemmed shrub in a container provided you are prepared to pot on at the recommended intervals and to supply it with sufficient water and food during the growing season.
Always keep pot-grown Eucalyptus in the air-pot container system for healthy and happy trees.😊 They do not thrive in smooth-walled containers ☹
For information on how to successfully grow Eucs in pots, visit our Guidance Notes entitled ‘How to grow a Eucalyptus in a pot and keep it alive!’ Click HERE to visit the page
Hedge-Screens: Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® is a good choice for a hedge-screen as it readily produces sub-lateral shoots – i.e. branches off the side-branches and finds no problem in becoming bushy. This is unusual for most Eucs. If allowed to grow, its dense habit will make a great privacy screen and the silvery blue foliage will reflect light, making it difficult to see beyond the screen.
Always prune your hedge-screen March 18th and maintain a profile like a capital ‘A’. That is broad bottom, narrow shoulders and a flat head. This allows light to all parts of the hedge and keeps it bushy. If you let your hedge develop into the shape of a capital ‘V’, its bottom will open up…not a great look!
Prune in spring, with 2-3 dry days forecast, to an ‘A’ shape, to keep it bushy down to the ground. Avoid pruning Eucs during wet weather, to discourage fungal attack.
Floral Art: Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® produces excellent cut foliage for Flower Farmers and floral art. This cultivar looks like a good candidate for all year round harvesting in that we have cut it during May, Autumn, Winter and late Winter. However, we are not cutting always from the same plant, but have several plants on rotation.
Firewood Production: Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® is not on our selected species list for Biomass or Firewood, because it is not sufficiently vigorous.
Do give us a call on our nursery mobile 07307 413 052 if you would like to discuss growing firewood with one of our consultants
Rural/Agricultural:
- 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. Good choice for silvopasture.
Ecology:
Bees. All Eucalyptus produce flowers with nectar and pollen. Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® produces useful flowers providing foraging for honey-bees and other pollinating insects
- Habitat creation and Game Cover: this species lends itself to providing good trouble-free habitat creation for wildlife and game cover, when planted in groups. Birds enjoy roosting in Eucalyptus trees and Pheasants like rootling around underneath them.
- Chickens: The shredded foliage of Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® is excellent at keeping Chicken nest boxes and hen houses free of red mites, which detest the presence of Eucalyptol. I used to line our Chicken boxes with shredded leaves, strew the floor and pile up the spindly branches for the chickens to make nests. It was all great till the foxes moved into the next field 😑
Environmental:
Growing on the Coast We have no experience of growing Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® 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.
To make this work, we recommend that:
- you plant a smaller specimen (1 litre or 3 litre, around 1m-1.2m tall),
- encourage fast establishment in a deeply prepared planting pit (follow our planting advice), to encourage deep rooting to grow an upright, stable tree.
- Staking will be required.
- Newly planted trees will very likely require a wind break shelter for their first winter in the ground with you.
- Zero grass or weeds during the period of establishment is non-negotiable!
Drying up or growing on wet soils. The breeders of Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® recommend growing this cultivar on a free draining soil. In addition to that, at Grafton we grow several France Bleu in our cut foliage plantation on our swampy yellow clay soil and they are doing amazingly well, providing an all year round crop of fluffy blue foliage for cutting.
- Tolerant of cold and exposed growing environments inland. The breeders of Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® advise it to be grown in a sheltered environment, where we know it will do well. At Grafton, we have several growing in our north-facing, wind-swept field and they appear to be remarkably robust.
We recommend
- you plant a smaller specimen (less than 1.8m tall from a 3 or 5 litre air-pot)
- encourage fast establishment in a deeply prepared planting pit (follow our planting advice), to encourage deep rooting to grow an upright, stable tree
- Staking will be required
- In exposed locations, newly planted trees will very likely require a wind break shelter made from horticultural fleece or sail cloth, for their first winter in the ground with you; this very much depends on the level of exposure
- Zero grass or weeds during the period of establishment is non-negotiable!
- Tolerant of poor stony soils once established Eucalyptus gunnii x gunnii ‘France Bleu’® does not require a rich soil and can survive in poor, stony soils. Tolerant of arid environments, poor stony dry soils once established. 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. The tree needs to establish a good, deep root system before it can survive in dry, challenging conditions. 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. Growth on impoverished soils will always be reduced.
