Eucalyptus coccifera – Tasmanian Snow Gum – 1 of the fabulous snow gums

Specimen Tree: Good for the wider landscape and for the medium/larger garden with free draining soil.  Interesting architectural habit. Good for xerophytic landscapes, winter gardens and Australasian themes
Growing a full sized standard: Planting the tree and running away is an option, but it won’t necessarily give you the best results. For information on how to do it properly see our growing notes here.

Growing a multi-stemmed bush or tree.  E. coccifera does very well as a bushy shrub, when kept pruned annually (do this on March 19th) OR once turned into a multi-stemmed specimen, you can grow it up into a mature tree with many architectural branches and an open canopy of adult foliage.

Why would you want to do this?  

To create:

• A tree with more body or ‘mass’ of branches and foliage for screening purposes, once grown back up to its full potential, but now with 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.
• To produce your own multistem from a young tree or maxi tree

Floral Art:  Fabulous species for cut foliage – robust and sturdy with a delicious minty fragrance.  The juvenile foliage is very different from the adult foliage; both can be used for floral art.  The robust nature of the intermediate foliage may make this species ideal for early harvesting in summer

Firewood Production: Not on our list of recommended firewood species, but the wood will burn.

Hedge-Screens & Windbreaks:  Great as a hedge-screen for non-boggy soils. As a young tree this looks different from your usual idea of a Eucalyptus. Beautiful deep jade-green, interestingly shaped foliage, making this a variety for a distinctive hedge or evergreen screen (2-3m tall).

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. Also, I have been told that the eucalyptol in the leaves deters flies

Ecology: The flowers are useful to bees and other pollinating insects. This species also 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. The shredded foliage of this species 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!