Pincushion Hakea

Hi,

I am looking at getting some plants for our verge and am wondering about a Pincushion Hakea. I've always liked the look of these, and on my home the other day I noticed a garden that has three in a row and they are all currently flowering and look great!

I've just read that they can grow to 6m though. I know that isn't massive, but it would possibly affect the warm winter light we receive in the mornings.

Can anyone tell me how long it would take to get that tall and if they can be constrained through pruning to stay at a height of 2 - 3 meters? Would it be worth getting some tube stock now to grow until we are ready to put it in the ground?

I also just read about a dwarf variety on a burkes backyard link.
http://www.burkesbackyard.com.au/factsheets/Flowering-Plants-and-Shrubs/Dwarf-Pincushion-Hakea/2488
The pictures appear in a scrollable window. Scroll down to the last one to see one in a pot. I think it looks pretty nice.

Thanks,
Chris

I had one at our old house and it was one of my favourite plants. I'd guess it was about 4m tall and it was maybe 15 years old when we lost it in a fire. I don't think it was getting any taller though...

I'm sure that pruning after flowering would keep it in check if you don't want it to get too big. It's a beautiful shrub, doesn't mind clay soil and doesn't need coddling, and it's lovely to have a mass of flowers in the garden in winter.

Yep the dwarf ones are fantastic They make great hedges And so do the ones that are the normal size. The only thing that stops native plants being used more creatively is us Simply buy a native plant and use the same traditional pruning techniques on them and they respond in ways you can't imagine in most cases. In fact you will wonder why we bother with Exotic varieties?

Oh and the Pin Cushion Hakea comes from a wonderful place
http://florabase.calm.wa.gov.au/browse/profile/2171

And if more West Aussies grew them, then as a mate of mine says, "If everyone in SW west WA planted a Hakea of some sort, then a food source for the Baudins and Carnabys Black Cockies would be fairly secure for the future"
The big cruisers of the SW skies






Right now I have several hundred over the road in the national park sounding amazing Sad to think though that most of them are pensioners around 40 or 50 years old and when they die, there is very few breeding youngsters They could be nearly gone in 10 or 15 years Clearing in the WA wheatbelt of nesting trees has decimated them and urban clearing is wiping out reliable food sources for them. One of the most recent controversial urban developments was the new part of Burns Beach in Perth's Northern Coridor Ancient Banksia woodland cleared for housing. That was a rare pocket of it too.

Buy a Hakea folks

Oh and these also make for a wonderful small feature tree Just let them grow a bit and start under pruning the foliage to expose the trunks
Any Hakea is great for doing this with I'll try and get some pictures in coming weeks of some nice Hakeas in full flower right now (or starting to be around October)

well most are anyway

Ones like Hakea undulata are a bit small but will make an excellent waist high hedge

Getting what is said to be the most attractive foliage plant in Australia (It is arguable) Hakea victoria is much easier in the east than here in the west. The east coast nurseries have better luck propagating them. One of the best photos Mrs Manchu has ever taken was of one of those. A rainbow of foliage colour. Really wonderful plant.

Hakeas are sensitive to man made fertilisers because like other plants in the family Proteaceae they have special roots that are amazingly efficient at getting Phosphorus from soils very low in Phosphorus. This shows them very well. Often when you buy Grevilleas and Hakeas in tubes you will see these roots very easy.

http://anpsa.org.au/hakea3.html

Will have to add the pincushion hakea to the plant list. I love those cockatoos and the racket they make.

I have just come in after tending to my windbreak. We have heaps of pincushion hakeas (laurinas) aswell as grevilleas (and lots of other natives). Although we only bought them as tubestock last year and being eaten by sheep over summer, they are starting to thrive and I think will look great. They do take ages to grow. we havent seen any flowers but when they do flower I will post a pic

Wow!

Thanks for such great responses.



We live within cooee of the Fiona Stanley site and have since seen a huge increase in Carnabys heading over our place. It is great to see them, but horrible to think that my grandkids may not! For this reason alone, I'd be keen to get a Hakea or two. It is also the name of the street where I grew up.



Does this include chook poo in compost. I was reading the Handyman magazine from Bunnings this month and they mention keeping chook poo out of compost (for natives) due to the high phosphorus. It also mentions keeping citrus out of compost. I have been putting all our citrus peel in the compost. Actually, even whole oranges that have fallen from our tree and now have fruit fly.


I was going to ask where to buy these. I just went down to Bunnings, but they have no Hakeas at all. If they are very slow growing, is it possible to get these as mature trees? Also, does anyone know if Apace in North Freo stock these?

Thanks,
Chris

I got ours from Oakford Native Nursery and Im pretty sure u can get them more mature. Give them a call. Its such an awesome nursery. I dont know if they are really that slow in growing or if its because we had 30 sheep invade our property and eat all our prescious plants down

Ours weren't slow-growing. Both took off and grew pretty fast. It probably depends on soil and position.

With regard to composts, there is a heap of silly stuff about them. Chuck in anything you want. Those who say don't put citrus or onion in worm farms need to get one and just throw caution to the wind, I bet they will be pleasantly surprised about what happens Make sure you have clean sand and also dolomite of lime to add from time to time

Here in Perth we need to be a little careful in using chook poo and chook based products. It is very alkaline. They are also high in nitrogen and acacias are sensitive to nitrogen. Proteaceae family are sensitive to Phosphorus. So outside those two types of plants, it matters little in regard to nutrients.

Do what you like with compost, as long as you have a sweet smelling mix at the end, you should be just fine, but I would be using the compost for the vegies anyway Natural uncomposted mulches will provide your plants with all they need.

Zanthorrea has recently been awarded as Australia's best medium sized nursery, they specialise in WA plants for retail. Bunnings Mindarie and Waldecks Kingsley would be the pick of retail nurseries North of the river at the moment.

Apace are a fantastic organisation, mainly reveg work.
http://www.apacewa.org.au/

the bunnings in BUsso had one Pincushion Hakae today when Iw as there with Mum. She bought me two different lavenders. 1 Avonview and 1 a boysenberry ruffle ( i think that was it) pretty.. . The Hakea looked a bit scrappy.

Thanks again for the replies.

I'm glad to hear about the advice about the compost bins. I've been thinking that I'd recked the last 3 months of compost by adding a shovel full of chook poo.

I'll take a look at the suggested nurseries and let you know how we get on.

Thanks,
Chris

Just came across a petition to help save the black cockatoos habitat. It's worth signing I think;
http://cockatoosneedyou.org.au/

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=8943

Hello,
Just doing some research for my garden and came across this post. I went to the wildflower nursery in Oakford (King Rd) last weekend and saw the Pincushion Hakea, about 4 foot tall in the pot. Great feedback here, thanks; it's cemented my decision about what to put in the middle of my garden as a feature tree CMooring, how did you go with your tree?
I had the garden design sorted then got my paving done. Has changed the look completely so now I'm redesigning pretty much the whole thing. Just have to work out where to move some of the plants....

we've ended up with 33 pincushion hakea's down one side fence on our 3/4 of an acre block. they were all tube stock. Growing in very rocky /stoney conditions. We decided on tubestock so they could find their own way through the rock. They were planted june 5th last year ( blogs/garden threads
have their uses) and were all around 20-30 cms max in size. Some are now close on 1 m high, some around 50-60 cms. The taller ones have a few branches. On the other side of the block in clay soil down from a leach drain so the soil is always wet and has lots of nutrients. I planted 2 from larger 20 cm pots. These had been sitting in pots for at least 9 months before they were planted around last September. These are now quite bushy and around 120 high muti branched and well established.

This is a pic of some of the smaller ones when they were first planted. Super stoney ground.



The photo below taken from as close as possible to the same position just now. Not quite 11 months later.


The bigger hakeas planted near the leach drains. There are 2 in this picture.One right in the foreground and the one in the background next to a post. Post is around 120cm high. These were around 60 c-70 cms high when planted and quite pot bound. I added soil improver, zeolite and some perlite to the holes to help them.

Thanks for the photos, Kex. We have just planted 9 tube stock pincushion hakeas in the last month, and I was delighted to find a photo giving us an idea of what they might look like in a year or so.

Yeah thanks for that. They look great.

I have my Hakea now, but it is still in a pot. I will probably chuck in in over the long weekend.