What to Plant in Melbourne - Month by Month

January in Melbourne can hit 40 degrees with hot northerlies, so this is a maintenance month, not a planting one. Deep-soak established hedges weekly, mulch anything bare, and shade-cloth young plantings through heat spikes. If you must plant, do it in the evening and babysit the water. Better: plan the autumn planting in the garden pricer while the nursery queue is short.

February stays hot but the light is turning. Tough natives and westringia can go in with commitment, everything else prefers to wait a month. It's an excellent month to walk the boundary and be honest about the screening gaps summer exposed, then price the fix in the calculator so stock is reserved for the March window.

March is the finest planting month in Victoria. The soil is at its warmest all year while the air cools, which is exactly what roots want. Evergreen hedges planted now, Photinia Red Robin especially, establish before winter and leap in spring. Feature trees, natives and advanced stock all go. If you plant once a year, it's now.

April keeps the window open: warm soil, soft light, reliable rain beginning. Hedging, screening, camellias, and the deciduous trees that make Melbourne autumns famous, japanese maples, crepe myrtles, ornamental pears, all plant beautifully. The formal garden look is this city's signature, and April is its planting month.

May is the deadline for evergreen establishment before true cold. Get hedges and screens in early in the month and watered in, they'll root slowly all winter and own the spring. From late May the bare-root season begins: roses, fruit trees and ornamentals at the year's best prices.

June is dormant planting at its purest: bare-root roses, fruit and ornamental trees planted into cold soil, storing energy for a spring surge. Evergreen planting slows but doesn't stop in frost-free suburbs. Avoid working waterlogged clay, wet compaction ruins beds for years. Frost-tender planting waits for October, no exceptions.

July is Melbourne's coldest month, and mostly a planning one. Bare-root planting continues, structural pruning happens now, and gaps in winter privacy are at their most obvious, note where you see the neighbours and price the hedge in the calculator. Photinia shrugs off frost that burns young lilly pillies, it's the safe cold-climate choice.

August is the last of bare-root season and the setup month for spring. Finish dormant planting early, feed nothing yet, and prepare beds. Hardy evergreens can begin going in along the coast and inner suburbs. Ordering now means your September stock arrives the week the soil wakes up rather than three weeks after everyone else's.

September is spring on the calendar and a coin-flip in the sky. Soil is still cold, so evergreens establish slowly but safely; frost-tender plants still wait. Hedges, natives and deciduous trees all plant well now. The famous September winds are the real hazard: stake anything tall, especially fresh advanced stock.

October is Melbourne's big month. Frost risk fades, soil warms, and everything plants: hedges, tropical-look growers in warm microclimates, citrus, flowering shrubs, the lot. It's the ideal month for an instant garden pack. Growth from an October planting is visible within a fortnight.

November is a strong planting month with one eye on the forecast. Everything still goes, but establishment watering starts mattering as northerlies appear. Murraya and gardenia in warm spots, westringia and coastal natives in exposed ones. Aim to have summer-critical planting finished by the end of the month.

December splits Melbourne gardeners into planners and gamblers. Tough natives and well-watered hedging can still go in early in the month; after that, heat makes every planting a project. Water young plants deeply twice a week, mulch, and spend the quiet weeks designing next year from the garden ideas pages.