Eucalyptus glaucescens ‘Tinderry’ – Tingiringi Gum

E. glaucescens grows into a very handsome tree.  Good Specimen Tree for the wider landscape, arboretum, avenue and for the medium/larger garden:
For growing a full sized standard, 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

Growing shrub-on-a-stick clipped standard: this is an opportunity to grow a Eucalyptus in a confined space and 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)
E. glaucescens can be successfully grown in this manner with pruning to shape on March 18th and again during the end of May/beginning of June
Growing a multi-stemmed bush or tree.  E. glaucescens responds well to pollarding and readily produces a multi-stemmed specimen. Annual pruning on March 18th will help to keep this species compact and bushy.

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 trunk
• 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 if ignored it will genetically it will want to grow taller.

Floral Art:  E. glaucescens is grown for its attractive, intermediate, oval foliage, rather than its juvenile form.
For information on how to grow cut foliage, visit our ‘Help and Advice’ pages

Firewood Production:  E. glaucescens is our number one species for Biomass and Firewood logs.   Vigorous, resilient, high yielding and the only one of the Eucs to be reliably resistant to being eaten by deer.
For information on how to grow firewood or lumber, please email or give us a call. We’d love to chat with you about the best way to implement your Eucalyptus project.

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.

Ecology:   

• Bees. E. glaucescens produces useful flowers providing foraging for honey-bees and other pollinating insects
•  Habitat creation and Game Cover:  E. glaucescens  lends itself to providing good trouble-free habitat creation for wildlife and game cover, when multi-stemmed bushes are planted in groups.
• Birds enjoy roosting in Eucalyptus trees and Pheasants like rootling around underneath them.
• Chickens: The shredded foliage of E. glaucescens  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. There is a thriving plantation of E. glaucescens growing a couple of miles from Wadebridge in Cornwall and within site of the sea.
• Drying up wet soils.  E. glaucescens is very at home in moisture retentive, but not permanently boggy soils.  Our Tingiringi gums have certainly thrived in our swampy, alkaline, yellow clay, putting on a great deal of weight over the past couple of years and forming handsome trees; and the surrounding ground has definitely dried up.
• Tolerant of cold and exposed growing environments inland  E. glaucescens will grow in open fields and pasture; it does not demand a sheltered position.  Rootgrow is essential when planting into fields or pasture-land.

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 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:  E. glaucescens  can be successfully grown as a multi-stemmed shrub in a large 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.  If not watered sufficiently well , it becomes thin and spindly, dropping its lower leaves.  We recommend you pot into a 45 litre very quickly for the duration of around 3 years and from there, into a container that is around 100 litres. Pruning on March 18th and again at the end of May/beginning of June is essential every year, to keep it bushy.  Single stemmed (standard) containerised E. glaucescens  are prone to falling over in high winds and can be challenging to manage, if not held in position; they are better planted in the ground.
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!’