The White Oleander (Nerium oleander (white)) celebrates the natural world with its full leaves and clusters of blooms. This broadleaved evergreen is sure to create a lush and rich verdant feeling for your garden. The single white flowers produce a sweet and subtle scent.
If you love plants that burst with flowers in the summertime, this plant is sure to bring a smile to your face! Its stems hold an abundance of these modestly simple, yet elegant white flowers. And it flowers for weeks in the summer and will be filled with Hummingbirds, butterflies and bees!
Lush, lance-shaped year-round leaves are a rich green that really spotlights the white flowers. They also catch the wind and give a lively presence even when it’s not in bloom. You’ll love that graceful sense of motion in the landscape. Up close, the leaves and flowers look dainty, but from a distance, the shrub shows off a rougher texture.
Hardy throughout USDA growing zones 8 to 10, these fantastic shrubs grow 5-8 feet tall and 4-5 feet wide, readily climbing or remaining shrubby depending on how you train and use it! Heat, humidity and drought-tolerant, these are fantastic plants for xeric conditions and even coastal gardens! These are perfect accent plants in even the most aggressively warm climates.
In the home garden, care must be taken to avoid the highly toxic sap. While kids tend to steer clear of anything “green” like vegetables or Oleander, it’s best to educate them early to leave this plant alone. Even though the leaves are extremely bitter and unpalatable, it is not a shrub recommended for use near stock animals. Some people also have a sensitivity to leathery Oleander leaves. Wear gloves to avoid skin irritation while handling.
Planting and Application:
You can enjoy these incredibly rugged and drought-resistant plants in so many ways in your landscape. Use this tough plant in hot, dry sites and xeriscape gardens where you need something “ironclad” that you won’t have to mess with. Mix and match with other Olenader for pink and white variety!
White Oleander are quick growers to their full height and are perfect for hedges, making perfect large backdrops, borders, and around property edges. Be sure to select the right variety for your space. Give them enough room to reach their full size. Use them as a beautiful flowering windbreak at beach properties. Create living walls for special garden rooms or hide the more mundane utility areas of your garden.
Plant them in a staggered double row in a zig-zagging pattern. Mass them on tough, sunny sites, such as hills, and cascade down retaining walls. It’s far easier and safer to allow them to grow to their full height and spread than trying to mow. Let clamber and sprawl without support down a hard-to-mow slope and slow erosion.
White Oleander also makes a wonderful container plant and patio accent plant and can be trained as a multi or single-trunk tree and make a great featured plant in the landscape! Although it is not cold hardy, people in colder climates can grow them as summer flowering container plants. In Zones 4 – 7, simply move them to an attached garage with a window in winter to protect them from the cold. Remember to water your containerized Oleander throughout winter!
- Clusters of Gleaming White Scented Flowers
- Bushy Full, Rich Evergreen Leaves
- Screening or Specimen in Large Landscapes, Great in Containers
- Historical Plant Used Throughout Asia, Africa & the Mediterranean
- Not Recommended for Use Near Stock Animals
- Teach Children to Leave Oleander Alone
Tips for Care:
These rugged garden plants caught national interest, and they found their way from Texas across the entire country. Oleander thrives in Zones 8 – 10 and are well known for their ability to tolerate the harshest conditions, including drought, salt spray, reflected light from windows and painted walls, high heat and high humidity. It grows in either acid or alkaline soils.
Oleander is as drought-tolerant as a landscape shrub or tree can be. Water regularly for the first year and less the next year and needs very little supplemental water from then on. In containers, Oleanders require regular watering and must be fed a general-purpose fertilizer at least twice a season. Recommended application rate is once in the late winter and once on the late summer.
The plant is adapted to almost all soils and can even tolerate brief periods of flooding. However, overwatering can lead to yellowing leaves. Best to keep this arid native on the dry side with well-drained soil. When supplemental water is given, water the soil at the roots and keep the leaves dry. Apply a 2-inch layer of compost or arborist mulch under the plant each spring to retain moisture and control weeds.
Oleander Pruning
Oleander stays fresh and flowers with little assistance. However, you can prune it to encourage bushier growth and more flowers, and to reduce the size of the shrub. It blooms on new wood. It’s best to Prune them after the summer blooms are finished.
Regularly remove damaged, crisscrossing or dead branches to keep your plants healthy. Be sure to bag and remove pruned branches from the site. The limbs and leaves should not be used as firewood or the limbs to cook with.
Once your plants are 10 years old, start a regular maintenance program of rejuvenation pruning. in spring, cut 1/3 of the oldest trunks off at the ground level in spring and remove them from your property. In a three-year period, you’ll have a brand-new shrub without losing valuable height.
- Full Sun
- Any Well-Drained Soil
- Salt-Tolerant & Works on the Coast
- Drought Tolerant Once Established
- “Plant It and Forget It” Tough
- Prune After Flowering in Summer
