The Do’s And Dont’s Of Griselinia Spacing

When it comes to planting Griselinia as a hedge, spacing is one of the most misunderstood factors. Many people assume that giving plants more room will help them grow better. In reality, Griselinia behaves very differently when it’s planted for hedging compared to a standalone shrub. If you want a hedge that knits together tightly and stays dense from the ground up, closer spacing is not just helpful , it’s essential.

Griselinia naturally wants to grow upwards. When it has plenty of light on all sides, there’s very little reason for it to push growth sideways. You’ll often see plants spaced too far apart race skyward with clean stems below and foliage concentrated higher up. The result might look healthy at first, but it rarely becomes the thick, unified hedge people expect.

The key to forming a proper Griselinia hedge lies in controlled competition. When plants are positioned so they are touching, or almost touching, they begin to compete for light very early. This competition changes the way the plant grows. Instead of focusing all its energy straight up, it produces more side branching. Those side branches overlap, weave together, and gradually form a single living structure rather than a row of individual plants.

This “knitting” effect is what creates a dense hedge. As branches grow across one another, they shade and challenge each other, encouraging the plant to fill gaps rather than escape upwards. Over time, this creates even coverage from the base to the top, with far fewer weak or empty sections.

When Griselinia is planted too far apart, the opposite happens. Each plant receives all the light it needs without interference. There’s no pressure to branch sideways, so the plant focuses on vertical growth. Later attempts to fill the gaps through pruning are often frustrating and slow, because the structure was never encouraged to form properly in the early stages.

For Griselinia plants in grades under 25 litre bag size, a spacing of around 500mm is ideal. At this distance, plants are close enough to interact from the start without being crowded to the point of stress. This spacing encourages early lateral growth while still allowing enough room for roots to establish evenly along the hedge line.

It’s also worth noting that spacing should be consistent along the entire run. Uneven spacing creates uneven growth, which becomes more obvious over time. Preparing the hedge line as a continuous trench, rather than digging individual holes by eye, helps keep placement accurate and makes establishment more uniform.

Some people worry that planting this close will cause problems later. In practice, when Griselinia is planted correctly and maintained with regular trimming, close spacing leads to stronger results, not weaker ones. Trimming reinforces the same principle as spacing: it interrupts upward growth and pushes energy sideways, thickening the hedge further.

Another advantage of closer spacing is visual impact. A hedge planted at 500mm spacing begins to look like a hedge much sooner. Gaps close earlier, privacy is achieved faster, and the planting feels intentional rather than temporary. While the initial plant cost may be slightly higher, the long-term result is a better-performing hedge that requires less correction later.

Griselinia is at its best when it’s encouraged to work as part of a group rather than as isolated individuals. By planting close, you create the conditions that naturally shape it into a dense, cohesive hedge. That early decision on spacing often determines whether the hedge succeeds or disappoints years down the line.