Frank, (and other members - but please note that I am particularly delighted to have found another forum member from Toowoomba) There are Bat's Wing Coral trees on the downhill side of Prince Henry Drive, which I assume to be naturally occurring. They are scrawny specimens compared with the glorious things we saw in the Aramac-Muttaburra area recently, which were a mass of red flowers and shrieking lorikeets, on a good big rounded canopy, in the most miserable country! I don't know whether the locals I've seen are just young, or whether that's how they grow round here. Atalaya hemiglauca goes well out there, too. With the predicted big global-warming fuelled dry-out of our climate, those of us who plant trees like this may be feeling very self-satisfied with our future planning, in twenty or so years time! On the same grounds, I think Brachychiton rupestris and populneus might be better than the others where a green tree is wanted. Their fire-resistance could have a much-needed firebreak effect when bushfires roar up the range as they were doing in Oct 2004. I have a suspicion that Ficus obliqua might be better than platypoda, but am never quite sure which tree it is I'm looking at when I see a fig in a sunny spot some hopelessly dry paddock around here. Do you know? Despite having written the book, I still have so many things to learn! The trick to identifying them is to catch them in fruit... To my great delight, some celerywood (Polyscias elegans) have come up spontaneously ("volunteered" as the Americans say) in my garden - and this in mid 2005 - Toowoomba's driest winter for more than a century. The area where they apeared is not one that I ever water. I suppose this is my reward for re-establishing a bit of a canopy. Tree cover of some sort is probably the "natural" environment as opposed to the dairy farms that would have been here for a century until supplanted by suburban sprawl. Someone else's comment in this forum about Angophora floribunda being a sign of a clean aquifer is interesting, isn't it? I wouldn't have thought of it as a rainforest tree - not even "arid rainforest" (love that expression)- but this is probably my unreasonable tendency to exclude Eucalypts from the "softwood scrub" category. It's hard to know where to draw the lines, isn't it, between "softwood scrubs" "dry vine scrubs", "dry rainforest" "marginal rainforest", and "rainforest". Especially when some of the same species seem to appear in the full range. Geijera parviflora definitely fits in the dry, sun-hardy end. It has a reputation of being very hard to germinate and establish, but I think there are local nurseries which have it. Love the plant, and it must be as tough as old boots once established. Are you growing it? I believe Petalostigma pubescens would be hardier than triloculare. In practice, I find that different people look at the same trees in my yard (I bought some labelled triloculare, I think) and are about evenly divided as to...

I dunno, sometimes I type out a response/message press the right butoons, come back the next day and it hasn't worked. My fault or this sometimes unstable site? Anyway, I agree with Ted except I thought that black scale was 'hard' scale, not that it makes any difference the remedy is the same. My reference (Encyclopedea of Aus Gardening) says that native honey-eater birds usually keep the scales under control. Do you have any of those about, pennyw? B.

Possibly scale, check the branches and see if there's a little, hard, bug infestation that's hard to remove, though you can flick them off with your finger nail sometimes. If there is, there's also likely to be ants travelling up and down the tree, they 'milk' the scales for their secretions. 'White' oil is the treatment - it chokes the bug and prevents it from sucking. You should also apply a ring of petroleum jelly around the base of the bush to stop the ants. I sometimes use a commercial insecticide but a lot of gardeners believe that's a no, no, now-a-days on account of possible damage to friendly insects.

The only reason I brought up the spacing of your privacy hedge is because this is something that landscapers do very often. Especially the ones with no real experience. Thirty years ago when I was landscaping for clients a lot of the work I did was TAKING OUT trees and shrubs that were suffering because they had been packed closely together by previous 'landscapers.' We called it "unlandscaping." You will be fine, your hedge will be fine, I get you want to block out the view as soon as possible - that's fine, except as a whole your hedge wont be as healthy or live as long as it could if it was given a little more room to mature. Try to look into the future a bit, and yeah, a few rocks placed around, some annuals or a perennial groundcover to cover the soil/mulch would be great! Wasn't trying to upset you, just pointing out something that from my first hand experience wasn't going to work as well as it could! Just trying to help, that's all. Have a wonderful day!! Here - I edited this to give you some scale - that is a 3' yardstick I placed in the tree to the right. Again, these trees have been in the ground for 15 years and haven't reached their full size yet. And adding even further after reading the response below - I don't believe my Green Giants have slowed down their growth - at all! Every one's garden conditions are different, and not all results are the same. I would say these trees will grow another 10 plus feet or so, and "gain some weight" around the girth. The reason I am saying this is because there is an arborvitae collection at a nearby Arboretum and the trees there are really, really huge! I have a fertile sandy loam soil - these got a shot of 20-20-20 when they were planted and haven't ever been fed again. Oh, and see the maple tree in the background? That was planted in 1979 as a sapling. it is now 50' tall. I have never heard the term "self limited" when referring to tree or shrub growth, what does that mean? Thanks, and again have a wonderful day!!