Eucalyptus urnigera – The Urn Gum
How to use in the landscape and/or garden:
How to grow or train it to get the best out of it
Eucalyptus urnigera is a very handsome tree with a slim, elegant profile in its early and middle years, before the canopy broadens out in maturity. Outstanding performance for growing both in large gardens and in parkland or pastures.
Fabulous Specimen Tree for the wider landscape, arboretum collection or avenue planting.
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 maintain a leading shoot and 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 smaller 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.
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Growing shrub-on-a-stick clipped standard and also growing a multi-stemmed bush or tree: Eucalyptus urnigera is very apically dominant, making it different in habit to its E. gunnii cousins. This means that ‘Urni’ is always very keen to establish a strong leading shoot and doesn’t really want to be grown or trained as a bushy shrub.
E urnigera will respond well to pollarding and coppicing, once it has attained a trunk of over 125mm. When it grows back, it is very likely to produce only one or two shoots and unlikely to be bushy
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.
Growing in a container: It is certainly possible to grow E urnigera in a container, but in our experience it doesnt want to produce a little blue bushy job for the patio, more a stately specimen to tower over your patio. This is fine provided you always grow it in an air-pot container for healthy, happy roots, and provide it with the necessary support to prevent it falling over in windy weather.
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 urnigera is not on our regular ‘Cut foliage’ list, but we do have a couple of Flower Farmers trialling it for cutting, in their plantations, because they love the Christmassy aroma, and the look of the powdery blue foliage set against the white stems.
Firewood Production: Eucalyptus urnigera is good choice for growing biomass and firewood logs. Fast growing and robust, it coppices well and regrows with limited competing shoots.
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, but E. urnigera has particularly spectacular flowers in May time, making it a real draw for honey bees and other pollinators.
- Habitat creation and Game Cover: E. urnigera lends itself to providing good trouble-free habitat creation for taller wildlife and game cover, when planted in groups. Birds enjoy roosting in Eucalyptus trees particularly in winter and Pheasants like rootling around underneath them.
Environmental:
- Growing on the Coast There is a stand of urnigera successfully growing close to the coast in Wadebridge, Cornwall. 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 (see our planting notes), to encourage deep rooting to grow an upright, stable tree.
- Staking will be required
- Newly planted trees will most 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!
- Shelter Belts and Windbreaks – A Case Study urnigera can be grown to form a good evergreen windbreak when planted as a single species stand. At Grafton Nursery, E urnigera is grown as an effective windbreak to provide shelter for our growing houses from up to 57 mph south-westerly gales. It is planted in a double staggered row at 2m spacing. The trees are allowed to reach around 6-7m. The tree rows are pollarded alternately in Spring every 4-5 years, to maintain continuity of shelter, and provide poles for rustic building projects and show stands! The logs also burn well.
- Mixed Shelterbelts E urnigera can also be mixed in with other plant species provided care is taken to mitigate competition from other plants whilst the Eucalyptus is establishing, as they don’t compete well when young. We recommend that you establish the Eucalyptus for a year prior to planting additional species or in a mixed plant setting, you install an automatic irrigation system to ensure the Euc is receiving sufficient water.
We recommend:
- you plant a smaller specimen (less than 1.8m tall in a 1, 3 or 5 litre air-pot),
- encourage fast establishment in a deeply prepared planting pit (see our planting notes), 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, sailcloth or similar, for their first winter in the ground with you
- Zero grass or weeds during the period of establishment is non-negotiable!
- Drying up wet soils E. urnigera is not a swamp gum, but it is very at home in normal garden soils and also in moist soils, such as a draining clay, draining peaty/loamy soils and draining sandy loams. It must be remembered that Eucalyptus are not aquatic like a Mangrove, but several species tolerate flooding for up to 6 months of the year in their native lands. This is a great species to help you regain the use of intermittently boggy ground. Dry up wet ground that intermittently floods, gain remedial treatment for winter boggy ground or which suffers from outflow from a Septic tank system or unwanted intermittent seasonal ‘ponding’. If you have un-usable winter-wet land, planting a group of swamp gums (see our swamp gum collection) will help towards draining an area of ground. The timber could possibly be harvested to yield a crop of firewood logs too, if coppiced every 6-8 years.
- Please note: Timber harvested from areas suspected to be contaminated with sewage should never be burned, but could be used in rustic garden construction, bug hotel, bean poles, edging pathways & borders etc.
- Sustainable Drainage Systems aka SUDS Needs trialling, but planted singly or in groups, urnigera will most likely draw on drain water percolating into swales or similar. Coppice or pollard every few years if you need to control the overall height of the trees. Eucalyptus draw on ground water for twelve months of the year, unlike willows, which lie dormant for 5 months through the winter.
- Case study E. urnigera in our Grafton Nursery Windbreak is grown on a draining clay pH; soil depth 2.4m over alkaline mudstone, with a layer of glacial cobbles at around 1m. These trees successfully tolerate and process a considerable amount of rainwater draining down from the (often boggy) higher ground behind us and prevent the growing houses below from becoming waterlogged in periods of heavy rainfall.
- Eucalypts grown on continually wet ground The overall height of Eucalypts, grown on continually wet soils in inhabited areas, needs to be considered (as with any tree species of great height), especially in areas subject to strong gales. Selecting your tree with a radial root-system is vital and therefore only use Air-Pot grown or air-root-pruned stock. Eucalypts grown in smooth-walled pots are a ticking-timebomb liability and we can speak from personal experience. Encouraging deep rooting by following our planting recommendations is essential. In addition, it may be prudent to consider pollarding or coppicing after 8 years of growth, to control the height down to around 10m, to mitigate the risk of the trees being forced over in high winds. Once coppiced/pollarded, it is recommended to maintain overall height at 10m or less thereafter. This practice usually only needs carrying out once every 8 years or so.
- Tolerant of cold and exposed growing environments inland urnigera will grow in open fields and pasture, once established.
We recommend
- you plant a smaller specimen (less than 1.8m tall in 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 urnigera 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 (see our planting recommendations). 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.
