Gardenia augusta Florida (Gardenia jasminoides)

Florida is the middle sized gardenia in this range, an upright rounded shrub carrying glossy dark evergreen leaves densely enough to clip into a line. The flowers are the reason to grow it: double white blooms with a heavy scent, opening through the warm months and ageing to cream. Its frame suits work the smaller and larger forms cannot do, which is a low clipped hedge along a path or a matched pair of pots either side of a doorway where the perfume is caught on the way past.

Position, pH and the hedge that yellows nearest the path

Part shade is the position it wants, with shelter from hot afternoon sun, which scorches leaves and drops buds. Warm temperate and subtropical gardens suit it; in cold districts it stalls over winter and starts late. Give it acidic, free draining soil built up with compost, keep the root zone mulched, and space plants roughly 50 to 60cm apart for a low hedge. Water steadily rather than in bursts, because soil that dries out while buds are swelling drops them.

The failure mode is chlorosis on alkaline ground, and Florida meets it more often than its relatives because of where it gets planted. A hedge running beside a concrete path or against house footings sits in ground that lime has leached into for years, and builders fill under a new bed is usually worse again. The tell is yellow leaves with green veins, worst on the section nearest the concrete while plants further along stay dark. Test the pH before blaming your watering, then correct with an acidic fertiliser, chelated iron, magnesium as Epsom salts, and elemental sulphur worked in over a season or two.

Florida against Radicans and Magnifica

The three augusta forms sit side by side and are not interchangeable. Radicans is low and spreading with small leaves and small flowers, so it edges a border or spills from a pot, and any hedging it does is an ankle high edge rather than a clipped face. Magnifica is coarser in leaf with much larger blooms on a bigger frame, better as a single border shrub than a clipped run. Florida sits between them, and it is the one to pick when you want a defined low hedge, a repeated planting along a path, or an evenly matched row of pots. Randia fitzalanii, the native gardenia listed in the same hub, is a tree rather than a shrub and a different proposition altogether. Compare the group in gardenias.

Trimming a low gardenia hedge

Prune straight after the main flush finishes, cutting back to a leaf pair to build density. A hedge can be tipped lightly two or three times over the warm season, but stop by late summer or you will remove the wood that carries next season's buds. Feed in early spring with a fertiliser formulated for acid loving plants, repeat in midsummer, and add iron and magnesium where the ground tends alkaline. In pots, refresh the top of the mix each spring and liquid feed fortnightly while the plant is in flower.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 8 sizes, from 80mm up to 400mm, priced from $16.95 to $199.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. The smaller pots hold younger plants that cost less each and establish quickly, which suits hedges, screens and mass planting where the plant count adds up. The larger sizes carry several more years of growth on the farm and give height and presence straight away, which is what you want for a single feature position or a screen that cannot wait. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to when to plant in Australia.