Our gardenias are so popular, all year round!
All gardenias are excellent plants for frost-free Australian climates, especially those on the humid side - it's why the climate here on our Sunshine Coast nursery is perfect for propagation.
Growing Gardenias
Gardenias are an excellent addition to formal style gardens, as they are handsome hedges and shrubs even when not in flower, with deep green glossy evergreen leaves.Free-flowering, and very glamorous, gardenias are very happy planted in tubs and containers as well as garden beds. In regions where winters are chilly and summers are hot and dry, smaller gardenias make excellent indoor plants.Gardenias need a rich, moisture-retaining slightly acid soil to do well. A light annual prune is all they need to keep them in shape. Check regularly for pests and diseases; if you see any signs, treat them with eco-neem.
Fragrant Gardenia
Gardenia flowers are prized for their fragrance. Many expensive perfumes try to recreate the elusive intense scent. All the true gardenias we carry are highly fragranced, except one. So if you're looking for the most highly-perfumed gardenia for your garden, you can choose almost any of them with confidence!Highly fragrant gardenia Magnifica is a long-standing best-seller for its large white double flowers and its deep green glossy leaves. It flowers over a long season from summer into winter, on tall wide bushes ideal for hedging and feature planting.
Tall Hedging Gardenia
Many of the gardenias we grow, like Magnifica, make excellent hedges and privacy screens for subtropical and frost-free climates. (Top Tip : You can filter all our categories - including gardenia - by plant height, to find one that is right for you.)One of the tallest gardenias at around 2m full-grown is Golden Magic, shown here. It's a favourite with customers as its flowers change shades from pure white buds through cream-ivory, to deep honey-gold flowers as they open. This gives a very pretty effect in full flower across an expanse of hedging.
Another firm customer favourite for feature planting - and super-glamorous hedging - is Aimee Yoshiba; also known as Aimee Yoshioka. It has huge flowers, as you can see in the photo, that untwirl from their buds to open in a very pretty shape, and it produces them generously too so you get lots to enjoy.
For a hedge around half a metre shorter than those varieties above, upright and slender Lacey Lady makes a fine all-round evergreen hedge;
and you can't go past Professor Pucci with rounded waterlily-like blooms. It's a slender shrub good for tall slim hedges.
Feature Shrub Gardenia
Many of the gardenias we grow are a compact size ideal for all kinds of outdoor and indoor spaces. Even if you have a pocket handkerchief back yard there's room enough for a gardenia.Four Seasons is a great value variety as it flowers almost all year round - hence the name! - making it ideal for smaller outdoor spaces where every plant has to earn its keep. We like the pointy, ribbony fragrant flowers.
Ocean Pearl is a lovely highly-fragrant gardenia that flowers almost all year round, and is a handy compact size. It's an old variety under a new name, standing the test of time. You know those old gardeners could recognise quality!
One of the most popular and best-known varieties of gardenia has to be Florida. It's well known as a 'florist' gardenia, prized for high-end wedding bouquets and buttonholes; and is often bought as a potted gardenia for the home. The glossy evergreen bushes produce a lot of buds and blooms even on small-sized plants, so it's great value.It's low enough to plant as an elegant stepover hedge too, which is how we grow it here at the nursery.
The gardenia with the biggest blooms might just be True Love®. Why not grow it for yourself and see?! As our customer Josie says, "I thought that Prof Pucci was so beautiful until True Love flowered today. The flower is exquisite....and soo huge!!!"True Love is also more pest and disease resistant than many other gardenias, which makes it easy to fall in love with.
For something completely different, plant the low and compact Grandiflora Star. Arguably the most powerfully-fragranced gardenia (though that is in the nose of the beholder), this variety has heaps of flat open flowers, not typically 'gardenia' in shape. This variety is fantastic at attracting beneficial pollinators, because the flowers are full of nectar and easy to feed from. The ones in our nursery are always a favourite with the tiny native stingless bees. That makes it a great choice to plant amongst a vegetable garden or orchard, to help your fresh produce flourish.
Ground Cover Gardenia
One of our most popular plants overall is gardenia Radicans - with its small slender deep green leaves and elegantly tapering flowers, it makes for a very handsome groudcover. If you live in a cooler climate, Radicans is also a little more cold tolerant than the larger shrub gardenias, so try this one out for yourself.
Ozbreed's groundcover variety O So Fine™ shown here has even more slender leaves than Radicans, and hugs the ground even lower, covering it with fragrant white flowers.
Low and cascading, White Star is that rarest of plants, an Australian native true gardenia. The parent species of White Star originates from the northern QLD rainforests, and is rarely seen in the wild or in cultivation. The leaves are matt, not glossy, and distinctively ribbed, so you can tell it apart from the exotic gardenias at a glance. Its flowers are very lightly scented.
Gardenia Relatives
Related to gardenia, but a distant cousin, is what's known as native gardenia - Randia, or Atractocarpus fitzalani. It's a closer relative of coffee bush in fact, another subtropical evergreen worth growing ornamentally for the sweet-scented white flowers. With small starry white flower clusters and broad rounded glossy leaves, native gardenia is a very attractive small tree or large shrub for humid frost-free gardens. You might find it in the wild north of Mackay along the Coral Sea coast of Queensland, growing in rainforests. It's grown for its large bushtucker fruits, sometimes known as yellow mangosteen or brown gardenia.
