What can this wattle not do?! it can be a dense ground cover, a spillover for a retaining wall or garden edge, a low mounding feature shrub and a lovely soft border plant. On top of all that it flowers like nobody’s business in the middle of Winter!

Acacia baileyana Prostrate is a low growing ground cover form of the Cootamundra Wattle, unlike its parent it does not have a weed capacity. It grows well on the East Coast and handles the humid summers OK as long as you keep your eye out for scale.

Acacia baileyana Prostrate has soft, grey, feathery leaves and bright yellow clusters of ball flowers which are slightly perfumed and attract the bees in Winter.

The habit is very spreading it can reach up to 3 metres wide and if left un-pruned also get to a height of about 1 metre. If you want to keep it more compact just prune back the un-wanted horizontal branches and snip the rouge stems that reach for the sky. By pruning regularly you will also be opening up the shrub to let air circulate and lesson the chance of a scale infestation.

I love to mix it with low green shrubs like Kuzea ambigua prostrate or it even contrasts well with Banksia ‘Roller Coaster’, which has a similar habit, for the coastal garden look.

The images above and below were taken at the Canberra Aboretum where they have used Acacia baileyana Prostrate as a mass planting also a dry creek bed next to a carpark. It has created a sea of soft grey undulating foliage and looks wonderful. It also shows what a tough plant it truly is.

So if you have an ugly wall to cover or a difficult understory position or an embankment that needs some retaining it is well worth considering Acacia baileyana Prostrate.