Gardenia jasminoides "Yellow"

The gardenia needs little introduction to a Southern gardener: glossy evergreen leaves and thick, waxen, intensely fragrant flowers that perfume a whole summer evening. This selection, grown simply as the Yellow gardenia, adds a twist, for the blooms open creamy white and deepen with age to a rich butter-yellow, so a single shrub can carry both colors at once against the dark foliage.

Gardenia jasminoides belongs to the coffee and madder family, Rubiaceae, and comes originally from the warm woodlands of China and Japan, where the plant has been cultivated for well over a thousand years. The genus honors Alexander Garden, the Charleston physician and naturalist who corresponded with Linnaeus, so the name carries a thread of Southern history even though the plant itself came from the far side of the world.

In the homeland the gardenia is far more than an ornament. The ripe orange-red fruit, known as zhi zi, has long yielded a clear yellow dye for cloth and food and holds an old and honored place in traditional Chinese medicine, while the fragrant flowers scent tea and perfume. In the Southern garden the plant is grown chiefly for that perfume and for the cool contrast of pale flowers on lacquered green.

Site the Yellow gardenia where the fragrance can be met at close range, by a door, a path, a porch, or an open window, as an evergreen specimen, a low informal hedge, or a foundation shrub. The plant wants warmth, acid soil, steady moisture, and shelter from hard frost, and repays the attention with months of scent. Pair with camellias, azaleas, and other acid-lovers, and give a little afternoon shade where summers are fierce.