In Praise of Poverty Bush
Gisela Chorley
With names like tick bush and poverty bush, what does Kunzea ambigua have to do to live down a negative reputation. It is very common locally in the poorer soils, both clay rich or sandy, as an early coloniser after disturbance. Left to its own devices it grows sparsely green and scruffy.
The seed germinates freely and the seedlings survive mowing for years while they become multi-stemmed. But if you mow around such a plant and allow it to grow it will turn into a dense bush. This is how I acquired a large number (20+) of Kunzeas when I moved to Vincentia.
Pruning after flowering using an electric hedge trimmer has kept them compact while they provide random shrub cover on the slope below the street. Last summer I halved the number of shrubs as my other plantings are expanding. Right now they are growing fast, densely green and getting ready to flower. I can recommend them as a dense hedge or screen that requires only one trim per year and no watering, fertilising or other attention. As regarding ticks, I have yet to become a victim to those pests in the Kunzea-rich parts of my garden.
From the newsletter of the Nowra Group of the Australian Plants Society (APS), October 2006, via "Native Plants for New South Wales", newsletter of the NSW Region of APS.
Australian Plants online - 2006
Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants
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