Best planted in full sun but can grow in part sun and is tolerant of slightly alkaline soils. It requires little irrigation once established and is smog and seaside tolerant as well as being hardy down to about 20 degrees F - what a tough plant! It has an attractive conifer-like appearance and the sharpness of the leaf points and the massiveness of the shrub make it a good barrier plant - great near the coast. It is also attractive to birds and bees. Good informal screen or windbreak and bird refuge plant that was once quite popular in California but is less often planted more recently, most likely because it is a bit prickly.

Sweet Hakea occurs naturally along the coast between Albany east to Cape Arid in Western Australia and on the Recherche Archipelago Islands (Bay or Isles) off the coast. It has naturalized in South Africa and coastal Victoria, Australia. The name for the genus honors Baron Christian L. von Hake, a 18th and 19th century German patron of botany. The previous epithet suaveolens means "with a sweet fragrance" in reference to the flowers and the new epithet is derived from the Latin word drupaceous meaning "drupe-like" and refers to the shape of the fruit.

This plant has long been cultivated as Hakea suaveolens but in her 1990 paper "New species, new combinations and other name changes in Hakea (Proteaceae)" Robyn Mary Barker noted that three years prior to the plant being described as Hakea suaveolens in 1810 by Robert Brown, C.F. Gaertner had described it as Conchium drupaceum and in 1818 the name was converted by Johann Jacob Roemer and Josef August Schultes to Hakea drupaceum. The great systematic botanist George Bentham first recognized that these two plants were the same in 1870 but it took another 120 years for this to become official with Barker's name change in 1990. Since an older name takes precedence, this plant is now rightfully Hakea drupaceum, but the name was long and continues to be overlooked, so most still list it as Hakea suaveolens. We grew this plant from 1980 until 2004 and only stopped growing this attractive and useful plant because of lack of sales. 

This information about Hakea drupacea displayed is based on research conducted in our horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also will relate observations made about it as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we receive from others and we welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share any cultural information that would aid others in growing it.