Olearia
Olearia × haastii
Takes drought and a little shade without complaint, but standing water at the roots is the one thing it won't survive.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Silver and gray
- Flower color
- White
- Sunlight
- Full sun; it will take light shade, but flowers less there.
- Watering
- Drought-tolerant once established; it will not forgive waterlogging.
- Feeding
- A light feed in spring; it isn't demanding.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- July
- Pruning
- Trim it over after flowering, in August or September.
- Mar–Jul Spring Growth
- Jul–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Dec Growing
- Dec–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 17.7 in
- In-row spacing
- 17.7 in
- Between rows
- 17.7 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 6–8 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
The habit is Olearia’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Escallonia, Griselinia, Pittosporum, Hebe
Shrubs, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com