What Are the Best Plants for Mass Planting in Australia?

There’s a point in every big garden project where buying plants one at a time stops being charming.

You’ve got a long driveway, a new house with an alarming amount of bare garden around it, a bank that needs covering, a commercial frontage, an acreage entrance or simply one enormous patch of mulch staring back at you. Suddenly you’re not looking for a plant. You need thirty of something, and getting that decision wrong feels considerably more expensive.

This is where mass planting comes into its own. It’s one of the simplest ways to make a large garden look intentional, and despite what people sometimes assume, it doesn't have to mean rows and rows of identical plants lined up like they're waiting for school photos.

Done well, mass planting is really about repetition. You choose a relatively small palette of plants that genuinely suit the conditions, give each one a clear job, and use enough of them for the eye to read them as a group rather than a collection of individuals. It's why landscaped gardens often look settled much sooner than home gardens filled with one of everything. There might actually be fewer plant varieties in the professional landscape. They've just been used with considerably more confidence.

And if you're about to plant a large area, there's another very good reason to think this way: maintenance.

Thirty plants with similar needs are generally much easier to manage than thirty completely different plants requiring thirty slightly different things.

Start with the area, not the plant catalogue

Before choosing anything, work out what you're actually dealing with. How much sun does the area receive? What's the soil like? Is it flat or sloping? Does water sit there after rain? Is it exposed to wind? How much maintenance are you prepared to do once the initial enthusiasm has worn off?

Then measure it.

I know measuring the garden isn't nearly as enjoyable as choosing plants, but when you're ordering in quantity, guessing becomes expensive very quickly. A bed that “looks about ten metres long” has a habit of becoming seventeen metres when somebody finally gets the tape measure out.

For a rectangular area, length × width gives you the approximate square metres. Irregular areas need a little more thought, but even dividing them into smaller measurable sections will give you something useful to work with.

Once you know the area, plant spacing becomes the next important number.

And this is where mature size matters enormously.

Don't buy twice as many plants because you want it to look finished next Tuesday

This is probably the biggest temptation with mass planting.

The plants arrive small. The area looks enormous. Panic sets in.

Surely we need more?

Maybe. But work it out first.

If a plant is going to become a metre wide, putting it 30cm from its neighbour simply because the tubes look lonely today isn't necessarily doing either plant a favour. Eventually the canopies collide, plants compete more heavily and the whole area may require thinning or additional maintenance.

On the other hand, planting too far apart can leave the mass looking disconnected for years.

There isn't one perfect spacing for every plant because growth habit matters. A spreading groundcover behaves differently from a clumping Lomandra. A compact shrub behaves differently again.

This is exactly why I think mature width is one of the most useful numbers on a plant profile.

You're not spacing the pots.

You're spacing the plants they're going to become.

Lomandra is popular for mass planting because it makes sense

There is a reason Lomandra appears in so many Australian landscapes, and it isn't because landscape designers ran out of ideas in 2006.

It works.

Good selected Lomandras can provide repeated evergreen form, movement and texture across a large area, and different cultivars allow you to change the effect without abandoning the basic idea.

Tanika® Lomandra is a great example. Its fine, arching foliage creates a softer appearance than people sometimes associate with Lomandra, and when it's repeated through a landscape it becomes less about each individual plant and more about the movement of the whole planting.

Lime Tuff™ Lomandra brings a fresher green into the picture, while Tropic Cascade™ gives you another foliage character again.

This is where cultivar selection becomes important. Don't simply write “Lomandra” on the plan and assume they're interchangeable.

They're not.

Look at mature dimensions, foliage, form and suitability for the site, then choose the one that actually creates the effect you're after.

Little Jess™ Improved is brilliant when you want a finer scale

Not every mass planting needs to be big and bold.

Little Jess™ Improved Dianella works beautifully when you want a more compact strappy layer, particularly around paths, garden edges and areas where a larger plant would simply take up too much room.

And this is where repetition starts doing something interesting.

One Little Jess is a nice plant.

Thirty Little Jess isn't thirty nice plants.

It's a texture.

Your eye stops studying individual leaves and starts seeing a sweep of foliage through the landscape.

That's what mass planting does.

The plant becomes a material.

Landscape designers understand this incredibly well, and it's something home gardeners can steal without needing a landscape architecture degree.

Meema™ can cover a serious amount of ground

If you've got a large area and don't particularly fancy buying 400 plants, start paying attention to mature spread.

Meema™ Hardenbergia is particularly interesting because it develops into a broad, shrubby groundcover around 50cm high and potentially around two metres wide in suitable conditions.

Two metres.

That changes the maths.

Instead of thinking only about the price of each tube, think about how much landscape each mature plant can eventually occupy.

Meema is especially useful where you want a more natural, spreading effect rather than a clipped or highly formal one. It can work beautifully through larger landscapes, on suitable banks and in areas where you want planting to begin joining together and covering ground.

And then it flowers.

Those purple Hardenbergia flowers appearing through a large repeated planting are one of those occasions where restraint pays off. You didn't need twenty different flowering plants.

You needed one good one repeated properly.

Westringia gives you structure without making everything formal

If Lomandra and Dianella are giving us movement, a compact or spreading Westringia can provide some solidity.

This is where plants such as Grey Box™, Goldie Box™, Mundi™ and Low Horizon™ Westringia become interesting because they don't all perform the same job.

Grey Box can create compact repeated structure. Goldie Box introduces a different foliage tone. Mundi creates a broader, lower form. Low Horizon gets even closer to the ground.

Used intelligently, you could create an entire large-scale planting with only a few cultivars and still have substantial variation in height, shape, colour and texture.

That's the bit people miss when they hear “repeat plants”.

Repetition does not mean boring.

You don't create interest only by adding more species.

You create it through contrast between the plants you've chosen.

If you've got a bank, think sideways

Slopes change the brief.

You don't only need plants that tolerate the conditions; you need plants whose growth habit makes sense when viewed across a large inclined surface.

Low, spreading plants become particularly useful because you're effectively trying to turn a huge visible patch of soil or mulch into foliage.

Mundi™ Westringia, Low Horizon™ Westringia, Meema™ Hardenbergia, Yareena™ Myoporum, Purple Fusion™ Scaevola and Aussie Rambler™ can all play different roles in larger spreading plantings where their particular growing requirements suit the site.

But don't treat plants as an engineering solution. If a bank has genuine erosion, drainage or stability problems, deal with those appropriately. Plant roots can play a useful role in landscaped soils, but six trays of groundcovers aren't a retaining wall.

Once the site itself is sound, though, a large sweep of spreading plants can make an ugly bank look like somebody actually intended it to be there.

Yareena™ is the sort of plant you don't fully appreciate in one pot

Some plants sell themselves beautifully on a nursery bench.

Others make much more sense when you imagine fifty square metres.

Yareena™ Myoporum belongs in that second group.

A spreading groundcover becomes interesting because of what happens when all those individual plants eventually start reading as one continuous layer. The ground disappears. The foliage connects. The landscape begins looking established rather than planted.

This is also why I wouldn't necessarily mix five different groundcovers through the same small area just because you can.

Let one do its thing.

If Yareena is right for that part of the site, give it enough territory to actually create the effect you're buying it for.

You can change the planting somewhere else.

Purple Fusion™ gives mass planting a completely different personality

Purple Fusion™ Scaevola gives us another spreading option, but with a softer flowering character.

Used as a lonely specimen, you notice the individual plant.

Used repeatedly, you notice what it does to the landscape.

It can soften hard edges, move across suitable open ground and bring flower colour through a much larger area.

This is where mass planting starts to feel less like a commercial landscape technique and more like something we should be doing in ordinary gardens.

Because if you've got twelve metres of garden bed, you don't need twelve ideas.

You might need three.

That's a very different way of shopping for plants.

Aussie Rambler™ is made for taking up some room

There are times when spreading is exactly what you want.

Aussie Rambler™ Carpobrotus can provide low, spreading growth in suitable conditions, making it useful where ground coverage is part of the brief.

And again, the interesting number isn't necessarily its height.

It's width.

When you're landscaping a large area, width is money.

A plant capable of spreading substantially across suitable ground can mean fewer individual plants are required to create eventual coverage than you'd need with something much narrower.

That doesn't mean automatically choosing the biggest-spreading plant for every project. You still need to consider soil, climate, drainage, sunlight and the eventual interaction between plants.

But it does mean you should calculate plant value in square metres, not just dollars per pot.

That's a much more useful way to think about large landscapes.

Nafray® deserves a look when the site gets tougher

Nafray® Cenchrus gives you a different form again: grassy foliage, movement and a more naturalistic character that can work beautifully in larger-scale planting.

This is where I love mass planting because you can make relatively ordinary individual shapes become spectacular through repetition.

Wind moving through a large group of grasses is completely different from wind moving through one grass sitting beside a letterbox.

Scale changes plants.

It's one of the cheapest tricks in landscape design.

Buy more of fewer things.

Please don't alternate everything

This deserves its own intervention.

You have Plant A and Plant B.

So naturally:

A. B. A. B. A. B. A. B.

Stop it.

Unless you're deliberately creating a highly formal pattern, alternating plants one-for-one can create what I call the barcode garden.

Every plant becomes visually separate.

Try grouping instead.

Perhaps five of A, then seven of B, then A appears again further along. Or one species becomes the dominant matrix with another repeated through it in smaller groups.

Nature doesn't usually alternate Lomandra, Westringia, Lomandra, Westringia with military precision.

It forms communities.

Borrow that idea.

How many different plants should you use?

There isn't a magic number, but the larger the landscape, the more confident you can afford to be with repetition.

For an ordinary residential mass planting, three to five well-chosen plant types can create an enormous amount of interest if their forms genuinely differ.

You might have a structural shrub, a strappy plant and a spreading groundcover.

That's already three layers.

If you want seasonal colour, add something flowering through selected areas rather than throwing a different flowering plant into every gap.

A simple palette also makes future maintenance much easier because you know what everything is supposed to look like.

When one plant starts behaving differently, you notice.

Tubestock makes an awful lot of sense for big projects

This is where tubestock really earns its place.

If you need thirty, fifty or a hundred plants, buying every plant at an advanced size can make the project eye-wateringly expensive. Healthy tubestock gives you the opportunity to establish a larger landscape economically and, when planted into suitable conditions and cared for properly, young plants can establish extremely well.

The trade-off is obvious.

They're small.

Your garden won't look finished on Saturday afternoon.

That's okay.

Mass landscaping is one of those situations where patience can save you a considerable amount of money.

Give the plants the correct spacing, mulch the exposed ground appropriately, control weeds and water the root zones carefully during establishment. As the plants grow, the spaces begin closing.

The garden starts doing what you planned it to do.

The first year matters

Large planting projects can fail because everybody gets excited about planting day and forgets that the plants still need us afterwards.

The first weeks and months are when you're helping those roots move out into the surrounding soil. Watering needs to respond to weather, soil and plant requirements rather than an arbitrary calendar. Weed control matters because small plants don't need vigorous weeds competing around them. Mulch can help protect the soil surface and conserve moisture.

And walk the planting.

Seriously.

Don't wait until half the landscape looks miserable.

Go through it regularly while it establishes. Check irrigation. Look for plants that are behaving differently from their neighbours. Feel the soil. Fix small problems before they become expensive ones.

Thirty seconds spent noticing a blocked dripper is considerably cheaper than replacing twenty plants.

Work out the quantities before you order

This sounds obvious, but large projects are where a proper plant count matters most.

Measure the total area, check the recommended spacing for the actual cultivar you're considering and calculate from there. Remember that square-metre calculations and linear planting calculations aren't the same thing, and irregular areas may need to be broken into sections.

Also think about how you're arranging the plants. A staggered layout can create a different result from a rigid square grid, particularly in informal mass planting.

And don't order based purely on how empty the site looks today.

I will keep saying this until somebody puts it on my headstone:

Check the mature width.

It might be the least exciting piece of gardening advice we've ever given.

It has probably saved more bad planting decisions than anything else.

So, what are the best plants for mass planting?

The irritating but correct answer is: the plants that suit the site and can be repeated effectively.

For sunny Australian landscapes, that might mean selected Lomandras, Dianellas, Westringias, Hardenbergias, Myoporums, Scaevolas, Carpobrotus and ornamental grasses, depending on your climate, soil, drainage and the job the planting needs to perform.

For another site, the answer could be completely different.

What matters is that you choose deliberately.

Don't begin with fifty plants.

Begin with three jobs.

Maybe you need something structural, something with movement and something that covers ground.

Choose the best plant for each job.

Then repeat them.

Because one of the great secrets of landscaping a big area is that you don't need an enormous number of ideas.

You need a few really good ideas used enough times to matter.

And if you're ordering thirty of something rather than one, that's a pretty good time to make sure you've chosen the right plant.