Magnolia Kay Parris Magnolia Kay Parris A beautiful evergreen Magnolia with glossy green foliage and large fragrant white flowers. Compact and upright, Kay Parris has glossy dark green pointed leaves that have waved margins and a stunning coppery velvet underside. Height: 4 metresWidth: 2 metres* Dimensions at maturity. Best suited for Kay Parris is an excellent small specimen tree, ideal as a feature plant in tubs and as a trimmed hedge with the added benefit of providing a beautiful fragrant flower.

i love bamboo, giant bird of paradise etc but do NOT put next to your pool. In our last build we used Zanadu. Big leaves that do not drop and bullet proof. Perhaps find another way to cover the fence other than plants that almost always drop their leave and have invasive roots.

People are either not getting the correct advice or not listening to good advice when using consultants. And pool consultants should be included here. The garden beds that are being left between pools, decking etc are far too narrow. Home owners are then looking for the magical plant that only grows .5 metre wide. This is impossible! To get the appropriate height with the required width of .5 metre is just not going to work. Ongoing pruning will be required and people can't be bothered.And please understand, bamboo is NOT the panacea for width problems as so many think. If you want healthy plants, then you need to allow for garden beds to be a MINIMUM of 1.5 metres wide to allow for a plant to grow 3 or more metres tall. 2 metres wide is better, but most won't allow this. If the yard is too small to accommodate a pool or large expanses of decking then my suggestion is to rethink how you manage the site.

Hi Roger, With the pleached trees, I think your underplanting amps up the tropical look especially if you go with a magnolia that have the dark green upper leave and the bronze underside. You could just go for banana or palms - personally I think you might be right about the clumping bamboo becoming a bit dense. Regarding your 400mm retaining wall - citrus are shallow rooted and tend to have a root system that goes out to their drip line. Maybe if you put it in a corner you can use the corner to espalier it in conjunction with staking it to get upper stablility but I'm not sure how it'd go with the roots - but give it a go at $30-50 depending upon size it's not an huge amount if it doesn't do well - just dig it up (just watch the thorns) and give it to a friend - check out Daileys for varieties and maybe get in touch and see what they think, they might do them on a dwarf root stock - I've found them to be helpful in the past. i'd be reluctant to underplant any kind of citrus though - as they are shallow feeders.