Don’s Tips: Gardenias

Gardenia flower

Gardenia

Gardenias are one of the best of all groups of plants.

They are dense smallish shrubs with dark green, shiny leaves and purest white, richly perfumed flowers. It really doesn’t get much better than that.

They are easy to grow, but you need to know what they like:

they prefer full sun for most of the day.

they like a rich, fairly heavy soil – not a dry sandy soil.

they love lots of duck poo or chook poo.

they need a warm position as they hate cold winters and frosts in particular.

In winter your gardenia leaves may go yellow, but this is only cold damage and the leaf colour will improve in spring.

The biggest flowering gardenia is Gardenia ‘Magnifica’, the one with the most flowers is ‘Florida’ and, there is a new groundcover one called Gardenia ‘O So Fine’

For cut flowers it is hard to beat gardenias. They were named after A. Garden – Alexander Garden is his full name.

Hooroo!