All About Gardenias - Where to Plant, Common Problems, How to Maintain, and Great Varieties

This video is going to be all about gardenias. Gardenias are one of those plants that are kind of the backbone of southern gardens. If we walked around here in our area of Raleigh, we'd see them all over gardens. Some of them don't look like they're in the best shape because they can be a little bit tricky, and we're going to go through some of those issues. And then at the end of this video, we're going to talk through some of the main gardenias that you'll see when you're out shopping for them. So there's going to be a set of videos here at the end of gardenias we filmed in various places. But in the meantime, we're going to just jump into how to treat them, how to get them in the ground, common issues that you may have with gardenias, how to maintain them, and then we'll jump into some individual varieties. But I will start this video with one of the individual varieties. This one is called Scent Amazing. We're filming this at the end of March, first of April, and it's absolutely loaded up with flower buds. And so this is an important component of gardenias in general is that we wouldn't want to be pruning it right now, right? There's a lot of pruning that might be going on in gardens that people are making decisions on size controlling things and that kind of thing coming out of winter. But if we prune this right now, we'd be taking off all these flower buds that are already on it. So knowing when to prune it, how to maintain it is an important part of having a gardenia in your garden. Of course, one of the big things that people love about gardenias is fragrance, right? So we want to get as many flowers as we possibly can on them. And we'll be talking about that in this video as well. There are a lot of different types of gardenias. So what you're looking at here is a variegated trailing radicans gardenia. Radicans gardenia is typically green and spreads across the ground. This is the variegated version of that. It's taken a little bit of winter damage. We actually had a real winter here in Raleigh this year. And so it's gotten a little bit of burn on it. Typically these are going to be hardy. You'll see in zone seven to nine or seven to 10, with some of them being listed for zone six. We'll talk a little bit more about that later in the video, but there are, there's a gardenia to fit the space that you have. If you live in one of the areas where you can grow them. The first gardenia we looked at over there, that scent amazing gardenia has a single white flower. This is one called foolproof that has a double white flower. So you'll see the sizes, you know, ground cover ones, midsize ones like this foolproof gardenia and scent amazing that get three or four feet. Typically that's going to be on the tag. We've seen the plants don't read the tags. They'll go through that a little bit over time, but you can control them around three or four feet and then varieties like August beauty and more tropical ones that can get quite big, you know, six to even 10 feet in size as the flowers, as the, as the plant gets bigger, typically the flowers get a little bit bigger as well. So some of the tropical gardenias will have very, very large flowers on them, but those are going to be grown mostly in places like Florida where they don't not in California, where they're not getting any, any cold on them. Those are typically only hardy in zones nine, 10, 11, that kind of thing. The ones that are hardier like foolproof, this is a great example of that, that we can grow in our gardens typically get flowers in that, I would say inch and a half range, something like that. This one is loaded with flower buds. It would just be absolutely flower to flower sometime for us at the beginning of May. So it's a, gardenias typically are just a hair later than the typical spring flowering shrubs. So we all know that the azaleas and the spireas and the dogwoods and the red buds and all those things are going to come out and bloom super early in the spring. The gardenias tend to trail behind that just a bit. They're evergreen, the glossy green foliage on them. Hopefully they have glossy green foliage on them. We're going to get to some problems in just a minute. They like acid soil. And so this is definitely an acid loving plant. Our pH here in our soil, somewhere around 5.8 to 6, which is kind of the perfect, kind of the perfect range for these. They're big iron feeders and iron is more available when you have a lower pH. You can get some leaf related issues if you have a higher pH with gardenias. This one I really like. Foolproof is, there's a variety called frostproof, been on the market for a long time. Gets a little bit stretchy overall in the landscape. This one tends to stay much more compact. This one's been in the ground for about two years at this point. It's going to come into full bloom here in the next few weeks and be completely covered up in super, super fragrant flowers. This is another variety called diamond spire. This one's in the Southern Living Plant Collection and it grows upright and narrow. So even another shape, you know, we can get large almost screening size plants, low doming plants that we would have on foundations, ground cover varieties. And then this one is for tall, narrow spaces or containers, that kind of thing. Where are we going to put gardenias in the landscape? They really would prefer, especially the further South you go, to be in afternoon shade. And so a lot, they'll take a lot of sun, early morning sun, midday, even a little bit into the midday. And then they would prefer to go into the shade in the afternoon. It's kind of the ideal place for them. That foolproof that you just saw out there on the front, it's in the full sun, full sun, full sun, but then the house puts it in the shade sometime mid to late afternoon. The trees back here behind me, put this one in there, that scent amazing over there, same thing. Gets a lot of sun coming up as the sun's coming up over the house and then goes into a little afternoon shade. And that seems to be the main thing. We elevate these a bit when we plant them. We have a clay-based soil here in Raleigh and they don't like wet feet. And it's an issue with gardenias, transplanting them into spaces where they could stay abnormally wet is very problematic. So we mound them up just a bit. We definitely keep them well mulched. I mean, the main thing is here, they don't mind, what they don't want is wet feet, but they do need consistent moisture. These will drop leaves on the bottom of the plant pretty quickly. I think I've let this one get dry at some point and it's thinned a bit down at the bottom. I can compensate that after it flowers here. It's budded up to flower. After it flowers, I could prune this a little bit and that would give me some foliage back in the bottom. But if you're getting those yellow leaves down in the dry, that's easy to recover from. You can prune this thing after it flowers every year and get some growth down at the bottom. You can't recover though from root rot. So that could be problematic. Just again, don't put it in a wet space, mound it up a bit when you plant it and keep it evenly moist. Typically I'll mix a little bit of pine bark into the soil when I'm planting gardenias, just to create a little bit more drainage in that clay-based soil. You'll see when you purchase one, when you flip it upside down and take the container off and you go to plant it, you're it's typically going to be grown in some sort of bark mix that drains well. The nurseryman is able to keep it consistently moist, but allow it to just dry down a little bit between rains and watering. Same exact thing it's going to need in the ground. I will say that clams hardy gardenia, which is one of the ones you're going to see a description of toward the end of this video, you'll probably see that it's hardy in zone 6b. If you're going to try to grow one of these in zone 6, your scentamazing would probably be on that list as well. If you're going to try to grow one in 6b or 7a, it needs to be in a protected space a little bit. It needs to be out of the winter wind. One issue is when we start tucking them up into some place, we lose air movement around them and whiteflies can potentially, if your plant's under some sort of stress, whiteflies can then come along and be a bit of an issue. So it's like this delicate balance of good air movement, but not a bunch of winter wind on it that can damage it. So it can get tricky when you move into slightly cooler areas, because I think your winter cold is going to put the plant under some sort of stress and make it more vulnerable to some of the issues that gardenias can get. Real quick, let's run through a little bit of care for gardenias. So again, I'm planting it, raising it up a little bit, and then that's going to put me in charge of watering it a little bit more. So if it gets dry, I know I just planted it in such a way that it probably is going to need me to water it occasionally. So getting them established, once they're established, I mean there's old gardenias in this neighborhood that have not been re-watered. Nobody's out there watering some of these that have been in the ground for 20 years. They're totally fine on their own in an area that gets regular rainfall without any ongoing watering. While you're trying to get them established, we want to water them well, and I'd water the area around the plant just a bit because we want to encourage it to actually get out into the surrounding soil and get out on its own. If I just water it right here at the center and always water it right in the center, what reason would it have to go and root out over here and become kind of independent or on its own? So that kind of covers watering. Pruning, if you're buying ones, you know, these kind of modern varieties that are available when you go shopping for gardenias now, almost all of them have been bred and picked to be very full on their own. Varieties like Clams Hardy or Scent Amazing or Jubilation is one I haven't shown you, or this Full Proof. Look, this hasn't been pruned. That trailing Radican's gardenia back there hasn't been pruned. So these are pretty compact and pretty easy to deal with without having to do a whole lot of maintenance to them. So if you pick the right one for the right space, that'd be my first recommendation. If you need one that's only two feet, pick Radican's. If you need one that's three or four feet, pick Full Proof or Scent Amazing or Jubilation or one of those that gets in that size range. If you have room on a corner of a foundation or a big place, pick August Beauty or if you're in deep, deep south, you can go with more of a tropical version. So pick the right plant for the right place and you don't have to prune it. If you do have to prune it, wait till after it flowers. I actually could do a little winter pruning on gardenias and they will, they're capable of resetting buds unlike some other things. They just bloom a little bit later in the summer. So when you, but the best time, the ideal time is just to wait, let them do this bud thing in the winter time and then prune them after flowering. Okay. But in some sort of emergency with gardenias where they get damaged in the winter, sometimes they can just grow out and reset flower buds. Anyway, a lot of the newer varieties, the advantage, another advantage to some of the newer varieties that they can repeat bloom. So if you want to let it bloom, give it a little bit of a haircut. If it needs it, you do not have to prune it. There is no requirement to prune it, but if it needs pruning, you can prune it after it flowers. A lot of these will flush back out and rebloom a little bit. That's one of the advantages and one of the things that's been selected for in these gardenias. We fertilize this garden once a year. If you had a higher pH, you know, 6.5 or higher, you might want to fertilize these with an acidifying fertilizer like Holly Tone or Azalea Camellia rhododendron fertilizer would also be good for gardenias. With us, our pH is already below. The ideal pH for these is, you know, five to six. Ours is like 5.8. We're already in that range. I don't need to acidify the soil. Okay. So I'm just using a regular organic fertilizer once a year. You'll see recommendations for fertilizing and fertilizing and fertilizing these. If you do that, I promise you, you will end up with a lot of insect issues. Let's go through some common problems that gardenias can get. If you have yellow leaves in the new growth, that's some sort of nutrient deficiency. It's generally iron, could be pH related, some sort of iron deficiency caused by a pH related issue. If it's in the new growth, it could be something else. You may want to get a soil test done and see if your other acid loving plants tend to be a little off color. You know, this could be an issue across your entire garden. If you get yellow leaves down in the bottom of the plant, typically that means at some point it got a little bit dry. It doesn't mean it's dry that day, but certainly over some period of time, it's been under watered a little bit and it will shed some of those bottom leaves to kind of compensate for that. A little bit of pruning after it flowers, hopefully can fill that back in a bit. You can get bud drop on them where the flower buds start dropping off and that could be inconsistent watering, over watering, under watering, that kind of thing. The plant's gone through some sort of stress where it's going to abandon those flower buds. Another thing we could see, we're filming this at the end of March, we have two more weeks in our area where we could have cold weather. Two to three more weeks where we could get extreme cold and look at this plant's already fully budded up and starting to actually even put on new leaves. So you could see sometime in the next few weeks, if we were to get some extreme cold on this, that would probably cost me some of these flowers and some of that new foliage that's flushed out on this plant. So that's always a possibility too. If it just turns black on that new growth all of a sudden, that may be cold related. If you're getting no flowers and the plant's kind of stretched, you may have it in too much shade. We do need some direct sun on these and that could probably cost you some flowers. Also, any other stress as well could prevent it from setting flower buds. Also, insect related problems, whiteflies can definitely be an on gardenias. If you try to bring them indoors, which is possible, everybody watching this video could try to grow gardenias indoors in bright lights and that kind of thing, you will find that they become susceptible to mealybugs and spider mites and other issues inside. And so you start to think, well, why? Well, that's probably stress related in some way where it's not getting enough sun. It doesn't have enough humidity. There's other issues that can come into play and make plants vulnerable to attacks from insects. I don't really get any whitefly related issues out here. Whiteflies are one of those insects that like to feed on lots of sugar, lots of new growth in plants. And the more we push them sometimes, the more vulnerable they are. So we got tons of whitefly related issues in my nursery growing gardenias because we were pushing them, pushing them, pushing them, always fertilizing them, even when they didn't want to be growing, we were pushing them, pushing them. So we constantly had whiteflies. I move them out here in a slightly open space in a garden situation. I don't over fertilize them. I keep them well mulched. The water's kind of regulating itself out here and I don't have any of those issues. I think that's, you know, we can kind of figure out here, you know, don't push them and give them a little bit of air movement and just keep that water regulated, not under and not over. And the plants should respond well to being able to fight off those insect and disease related issues. We have our gardenias kind of scattered around the garden. So when they're in flower, you're probably going to be in a space where you're going to smell it. That's kind of an important thing. If you're only going to have one, especially if you're in a colder area, you probably needed to have it up against toward a foundation. And so putting one next to a front entrance location or next to a screen porch or next to, you know, somewhere it was slightly protected, but you're near the fragrance at times is probably a good idea. You got, again, I went back, I said earlier, you need to pick the right plant for the right place. You know, if you put one that's going to get eight feet tall next to a place where you want to keep it three feet tall, you're going to be pruning on it all the time, probably costing yourself some flowers and just generally not enjoying the plant all that much. This Scent Amazing Gardenia has been in this spot for five years. It's been pruned maybe once in that time. It's got one branch here that I might take back a little bit because it's sticking up above the plant after it flowers. And that's probably all I'm going to do to this plant. So it's right plant, right place. They're also good as container plants, but we'd have to, if we had one in a container here in Raleigh, when something's in a container, it's basically in a colder area because the roots are exposed to the cold where it would be more insulated in the ground. So all of a sudden I go from a zone 8A area to zone 6A if I have one in a container and that's not going to be for a happy Gardenia. So if you're growing them in containers, which are great container plants, you need to protect them during the wintertime or put them in the ground for the wintertime unless you're in the deep south. But this is, again, this is about right plant, right place. I will say that it may take you a couple of times to figure this out. There are probably more Gardenias purchased that end up fading away in the landscape in some way before somebody learns the proper place to put them in their own garden. This is a plant that you may have to take a few swings at to get it right. Because even for me, I've planted a few in my lifetime that it would just, they were off colored, they were yellow, they just kind of faded away, they were in too cold of a space. Whatever it was, they declined pretty quickly. Over that time I've just developed this, okay you just plant them high, water them when they need, keep them consistently moist, make sure the mulch is close to them. All the plants that are around this plant are also protecting the roots a bit. These are shallow rooted plants and the sun is not beating down on these roots in this space. If you put them six feet apart in a bed in the full sun in your front garden, the roots are just absolutely going to be really really hot during the summertime. You're going to find the spot to grow one. If you have acid soil and you're in zone 7 to 9 or 7 to 10, you can probably find a place to grow one. It's just going to maybe take you a little while to do that. So to end this video about one of the more rewarding plants for the landscape that honestly can be a little bit tricky. I mean if we're being completely honest, there are easier landscape plants than gardenias, but they certainly are not as rewarding as gardenias necessarily. They're definitely worth trying. So at the end of this video here you're going to see some that we filmed over the last couple of years, some various varieties that you might select from to find a spot in your garden for a gardenia. Thanks for watching. This is radican's gardenia or trailing gardenia. You can see the flat natural growth that this plant has. Typically you're going to see these in gardens less than two feet in height and maybe three to four feet in width in time. Although we've seen one that's three or four feet in height and five or six feet in width where it's never been pruned before and it's got some a couple decades on it. These will have those double white super super fragrant flowers typically May and June and then a few residual flowers on it the rest of the summer even into early fall. Rich dark green foliage. Plant doesn't like wet feet so this is a plant that you want to make sure that it's going to dry out between rains and waterings and then you know that doesn't mean it's super super drought tolerant and you never have to water it. It just means that it wouldn't want to sit in water between rains and waterings. So keep that in mind let it dry out in between. Other than that pretty easy plant. I'll dome these any gardenia up in our clay soils and Raleigh to make sure they're not going to stay wet and then you get this rich green foliage year-round and then you're rewarded with super super fragrant flowers in the late spring early summer and then a few residual ones the rest of the summer. This is a clams hardy gardenia and where a lot of the gardenias have these double you know full double flowers on them. They're fragrant double flowers. This one has a single and a lot of people you know I didn't sell as many of these at the farmer's market growing gardenias over the years but some people were turned off by that single flower but this thing out flowers virtually every other gardenia. So it turns just basically solid white in May and June and then it has residual flowers on it after that and then you'll get these where the flowers were during the previous season you'll get these red these will turn bright bright red on the plant a lot of times and carry these up through the winter time. This one I think on any list is going to say it gets three to four feet by three to four feet something like that so low mounding shrub and it can be kept that size forever but we see the occasional one around the neighborhood that's at least six feet in height and probably five to six feet in width as well. Super super hardy. These are I think amongst the easier gardenias because gardenias can be finicky plants but for some reason clams hardy tends to out-compete the rest of them. Its will to live seems better than some of the other gardenia varieties and again I think you end up with far more flowers on it with the same exact fragrance as any of the doubles. This is diamond spire gardenia this is a really interesting gardenia that's kind of upright and fastidious so it's upright and narrow. Most of our gardenia varieties are either very large kind of roundish shrubs or very low hedging shrubs. This one kind of is in the middle of that four feet tall maybe slightly higher than that in time and only about two feet in width so it's a really interesting container plant if you're looking for a thriller in the middle of the container and then you can put some sort of weeping you know or you can put your filler and your spiller in there with the thriller. These are going to bloom with very fragrant flowers just like any other gardenia sometime typically around May or June maybe a little earlier if you're down in the Gulf Coast area these are hardy in zone 7 to 10. This one's so interesting because not only does it have an upright habit and then it comes into full flower with these flowers wears these flowers on the outside which is really it almost looks like they're placed on it they're so perfect of course super fragrant but it has this a very different foliage than you'll see it's almost the foliage of something like a fiddle leaf fig of course a much smaller version of that but you see how interesting the foliage is on this one so even if this was a not a flowering plant this beautiful evergreen shrub looks great in the garden with or without flowers on it so they'll flower typically again for us in the Raleigh area sometime around mid-May so after most of the spring flowering shrubs have finished that's when the gardenias tend to come into flower and then it will get residual flowers on it during the summertime so full flowered late spring flower here and there the rest of the summer and then this really interesting upright narrow habit this is gardenia jasminoides variegata or variegated gardenia this is an upright grower there's actually trailing gardenias that grow kind of flat to the ground and there's a variegated version of that if you want one a variegated one that grows lower but this one is the upright version these are stretching for light a little bit because i think they're being grown in a little bit too much shade so they're typically a little fuller than what you're seeing here and they have an incredibly striking variegation so you know we talk about variegated plants you know sometimes it's just a little slash of yellow or a little spot of white this truly has a vivid vivid variegation on it you can see it from a mile away these get the double white flowers that you would expect on a gardenia that are very fragrant you just i've never found that you get as many it doesn't flower as well as something like august beauty gardenia which would basically be the the green leafed equivalent to this probably six to eight feet in height over some period of time this one definitely needs part shade you can grow august beauty gardenias most of them part shade is kind of best overall but you can grow that one out in a little more sun and i've seen it in the middle of golf courses you know they're just irrigating them to do that but this plant is going to need part shade or it's going to burn in the in the summer months which is going then you're playing this game where it's stretching a bit because it's in a little bit too much shade but i think it's worth growing regardless even if you're getting less flowers even if it's not quite as thick growing as some other gardenias because the variegation is just so so showy and in a place with we're we're in a pine forest here basically where these are being grown and in these kind of long shadows on a cloudy day like this you can just see them from a mile away this is august beauty gardenia this is one that's been on the market for a long time and it gets some size to it there's a lot of gardenias out on the market that are ground cover gardenias and then a lot a lot that are in the three to four foot range and we'll cross proof gardenia being one of the more common ones that are that size or jubilation that three to four foot range and then at august beauty which gets five to eight feet something like that it can be kept smaller than that and a lot of people do keep it smaller than that yeah but you can see it has a pretty pretty upright habit overall really great dark green foliage on this one typically for us in our raleigh garden these would bloom sometime in may so a little later than the other spring flowering shrubs and they have big double white flowers on them not as big as tropical gardenias by any stretch that get really really large you know three and four inch flowers but these are let's say two two and a half inches across very very fragrant again double flowers they'll come into full flower all at once just kind of almost not cover up but a lots and lots of white flowers on it and then during the summer into fall they'll throw out the residual flower the rest of the season but this one has a great dark green foliage upright habit probably misplanted as much as any other plant because it's just it's going to get this big uh and it tends to you know it's this big and leafy evergreen in the pot when you look at it and it's in full flower and you take it home you put it under three foot windows and you're pruning it forever so make you know put this on a corner foundation or in a low screen if you're in warm enough areas these are hardy and like zone seven to ten um 7a you definitely have them very protected uh up against the house 7b a little more open space by the time you get to zone eight this could be in a low hedge that's kind of the proper place for this plant because you can see its natural habit is to be kind of rigidly upright and it becomes a nice you know upright shrub like this unless you're having to prune on it all the time gardenias can come with a few problems uh occasionally uh that you know there that can be a little finicky in our gardens make sure you're in a well-drained spot that's the starter point is is to make sure you plant these up high a little bit above the grade in the garden and allow them to dry out between rains and waterings