Fast Growing Plants

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Every plant here is tagged fast growing for a reason: screening shrubs that put on 60cm to a metre a year, shade trees adding a metre or more, bamboo that does several, plus quick climbers, groundcovers and tropical foliage. It is one of the largest collections on the site, so filter by mature size, climate and position rather than scrolling. Speed always brings a maintenance bill, and the guide below is honest about which plants are worth it and how to keep them in bounds. What fast growing actually means Growth rate claims are the most inflated numbers in horticulture, so here are realistic ones. A fast shrub in good conditions puts on 60cm to 1m a year: sweet viburnum, murraya, privet and the quickest lilly pillies all sit in that band. A fast tree adds 1m or more a year for its first decade; jacaranda, Illawarra flame tree, spotted gum, silky oak and the poincianas manage it in the right climate. Clumping bamboo is the outlier, with new culms reaching full height in a single season, which is why a slender weavers screen can hit 4m within two to three years. Climbers such as star jasmine and pandorea run 2m to 3m of new stem a year once settled, and fast groundcovers like myoporum and dichondra cover a square metre in a season. Halve all of it for poor soil, no water or the wrong climate. The trade off nobody mentions A plant does not stop being fast the day it reaches the height you wanted. The same vigour that closes a screen in two years produces the regrowth you will trim for the next twenty, so buy speed only where you need it. A useful rule: go fast where you are desperate for privacy or shade, and go moderate where the planting just needs to end up somewhere eventually. Fast pioneers can also be shorter lived; a wattle gives you a beautiful tree in three years and often bows out inside fifteen, which is fine if you planted slower trees behind it as the succession plan. Fast plants, job by job Privacy and screening. Sweet viburnum, murraya, box leaved prive