Choosing Trees That Thrive in Poor Soil Conditions

Poor soil is the rule, not the exception, on a lot of Australian sites. Shallow, rocky, sandy, compacted, low in organic matter. The good news is plenty of useful trees are built for exactly that.

Five that thrive in poor soils with very little fuss.

Read the soil before you plant

Dig a hole to spade depth. Fill it with water. If it drains in a few hours you have sandy or shallow soil. If it sits overnight you have clay or compaction. Either is workable, but each needs a different tree.

Manzanillo Olive

The original poor-soil tree. Thrives on rocky, mineral-poor ground. Resents heavy feeding and rich soil, which is why it works where richer trees fail.

Coast Banksia

Built for sandy, low-nutrient coastal soils. Proteoid roots pull phosphorus from poor ground. Never feed it phosphorus heavy fertiliser.

Brittle Gum

Eucalypts shrug off shallow rocky soils. Brittle Gum is a clean smooth-barked species with a manageable size and serious resilience.

Weeping Myall

Wattles fix their own nitrogen, which means they create the soil they live in. Acacia pendula in particular is built for compacted inland clay.

Kurrajong

Australian icon for tough country sites. Stores water in its swollen trunk and rides through droughts that kill less specialised trees.

Planting in poor soil

Dig a hole twice as wide as the rootball but no deeper. Backfill with the native soil rather than imported mix, so the roots learn to live where they are. Mulch out to the drip line but keep mulch off the trunk. Water deeply through the first two summers, then let the tree work for itself.