I live in middle TN but Gardinias don't grow well in TN. I bought a plant and keep it indoors during the winter. I get two buds around March. I know this didn't help but I love my gardenia and would love to get more. C Smith

Actually, some varieties are reasonably hardy here. But I don't know about Memphis! I have two varieties that I left out all last winter, and they are doing fine. I'll check tomorrow to see what they are!

thanks for the information!

One of my gardenias is 'Daisy', the other is 'Variegata'. Good luck with whatever you decide on!

Thanks, amazondoc! I'll check out both Daisy and Variegata

I have a gardenia (Nursery left over from last year) that I planted in Spring Hill (35 miles south of Nashville) about a month ago and it still lives. It is about 3 feet away from a south facing brick wall. It is not as happy as I would like, but it is happier than when I got it, so there is hope.

Sharon

I live about 25 miles from Nashville myself and was just doing research to see if I could possibly grow a gardenia outside here. I have a spot that I want something evergreen and that will grow to be several feet tall. The Gardenias I was just reading about in June's Southern Living sounded great because they fit that bill, plus have great big, beautiful & fragrant flowers. But I wonder if they could survive our winters? (The type was "Mystery")

Since I grow them here, you should have a lot more possible selections than I do. Absolutely without doubt you could grow the single bloom Kleim's hardy. For me it barely turns brown in the winter. So far it is not as tall a shrub as I would like---but it does bloom and survive. The daisy that amazondoc mentioned is similar in flower(singles) and may have similar parents.

There are several doubles that might work for you. Chuck Hayes has returned one season for me but the leaves that weren't mulched got killed by the cold wind. August(a) Beauty might work. I had it protected and it still was damaged a little.

I think your worst difficulty might be some winter kill but root hardy and with protection damage can be minimized. They are very suseptible to mealy bugs which you probably have in abundance. You can make your soil acidic though sufficient moisture might be a problem in your heat. I'd probably try for a part sun location.

Check your local big box stores---especially late in the summer. Lowes had a small selection in spring and Home Depot had a few last fall. Since lots of folks I know in zone 7 grow them, surely someone in your zone 8 has a good selection.

To me that wonderful tropical smell is worth a little extra effort.

Give it a try---and post your results.

Gardenias absolutely hate our dense clay soil and heat and humidity combination. They rot and get chlorotic unless you go to great pains to prepare a proper bed for them. Even the so called "hardy" ones tend to rot during the winter because it's so wet. They prefer a well drained bed that's only slightly acidic, and our naitive soil is around 5.4 - 5.9. So, if you do the prepwork for the beds and amend the pH, and make sure they're well drained during winter and in a sheltered spot, you may can grow them. Antique roses are more rewarding, more forgiving, just as fragrant and for a longer period of time.

But there's absolutely nothing in this world like the scent of gardenia. It just sends me into ecstasy every time. :-)))

I shoulda mentioned above, but I don't think I did -- my gardenias are potted, so I don't have to worry about the clay. As HollySprings says, you absolutely do have to worry about drainage if you put yours in the ground!

My mother-in-law has a row of gardenias planted outside her house near Pulaski, TN. They have survived two winters so far, but she does have them on the southeast side of her house and she does have them in a well-drained location.

I just got several cuttings from my mom's place in north Georgia. They have 3 huge gardenias that are absolutely gorgeous. I have my cuttings in little pots and hope they will root.

Georgia also has clay, but it isn't as heavy and impermeable (is that a word?) as our clay here which is like the modeling clay you can buy at the store. Maybe I should put these in pots also, but I hate having to lug pots around -- in and out, in and out.

I may fix up a drainage ditch like I did with the lavender. Will that work?

Katie

For some reason my gardinas are loseing all there leaves I think I over watered. I also read they like lots of iron. so I went and bought som plant food/ hope that helps I hate killing plants!! C

I'm sure that you can grow Gardenias in Memphis. Expect most types to die back to the ground after a severe freeze with temps below the upper single digits or prolonged below freezing temps. Also, an early nasty freeze while the plant is not dormant can cause this as well (teens in November following a run of days in the 70's).

There are hardier types on the market now, such as Daisy (already mentioned), Grif's Select, Shooting Star, and Dirr Select. Those may not die back to the ground unless temps. approach 0 degrees. When they die back, they won't bloom the next year.

I usually amend my soil with finely ground pine bark (soil conditioner), make sure they are planted "high" in a mound above the surrounding soil level, and then mulch them heavily. I have never found them to be as fussy as many people say... There are Gardenias everywhere here in the Birmingham area.

I have two August Beauty gardenias planted in my Moon Garden in Lincoln County. They were a gift and are trimmed to a tree form. I put them in last spring and they survived this past winter just fine. Both are covered in buds now.

SpringHillLady, you need to replant your gardenia to get it off the south facing wall. As far north as you are, nothing will kill it faster this winter than having it planted facing south. Even here in Atlanta is too far north to do that. The problem is that during warm days in late winter and early spring, a gardenia planted on the south side of a house warms up too much and gets tricked into growing. The next cold snap kills it dead, dead, dead. The trick is to plant the gardenia facing north or northeast. Even then I don't know if you will get a gardenia through the winter where you are, but they do not survive southern exposures.

To the original poster in Memphis, try Kleim's Hardy. It takes more cold than most. You're in basically the same zone as Atlanta although your summers are hotter and your winters colder than ours. You also need to avoid a soutern exposure and plant in an area protected from wind if you can. Good luck - we're all really too far north for gardenias, but they're hard to resist.

I live outside Memphis and have found that sometimes you can grow gardenias and sometimes you can't. Dirt, side of house, good or bad winters - all make such a difference. I am now growing a gardenia - August Beauty - in a large pot. I've had it for years and it is thriving. However, it is coddled and treated like an invalid. If the temp is going to be below 20 degrees my husband drags it into the well house. On nice days, he drags it out into the sun. It spends summers on the patio in about half day sun - not the awful afternoon sun. It is placed near a hydrant so that it is easy to water and doesn't dry out.
Just one step out onto the back porch and the scent hits me - I am in ecstasy. One blossom in the bedroom makes me sleep like a baby. It evokes the most wonderful memories for me - a time when things moved more slowly, when manners were important, when people took time to sit on the porch with a friend and drink iced tea, and a hand held fan kept you cool.

I have two very large gardenias that are growing happily in equally large plastic pots. They have just about bloomed out now, but they probably had three hundred flowers this summer. The fragrance was intoxicating.

Basically, I leave them outside until the weather really gets chilly...like down into the mid or low 20s (December). I then shove them into my south-facing garage where they stay until the weather warms up a bit. The garage is part of the main house, but it doesn't have supplemental heat during the winter. It gets chilly not not overly cold.

I move them out during nice weather and back in during bad weather. It sounds like an awful routine, but the plants love it. By the time mid-March rolls around, I move them out to their summer home (which is about fifteen feet from their winter home).

I think I'm going to do some selective pruning this year, because the plants really are getting huge. One of them is almost six feet tall. A friend suggested that I add coffee grounds from the local Starbucks to my usual top-dressing last spring. It does seem to have boosted blooms and plant growth this summer.

I have at least one photo up at Flickr.com. Look for Michael Steven or check the flower forum for "gardenia."

I would add a photo here, but I don't know how.
Michael

As others have suggested, the gardenias I would recommend here in the Memphis area are Kleim's Hardy and August Beauty.

Another one to look for is the dwarf, Gardenia augusta 'Radicans.' It's definitely a smaller plant, but I've seen it make it through the winter with less damage than Kleim's Hardy or August Beauty. It has nice tiny little leaves that can be used well in the landscape, as well. Overall, it's a more attractive plant to me -- the larger gardenias that I've seen surviving here are rather often ugly plants with marvelous flowers!

I've been growing a 'mystery' gardenia successfully outside for some years now. It appears to be quite cold hardy (it's seen single digits...) and is five or six feet tall. It bloomed with dozens of blooms this year. I did have to relocate it away from a south facing brick wall because of black sooty mold and it is much happier after I did that- although it still has a southerly exposure.

I used it as a pollen parent for a 'daisy' gardenia that I obtained this year and now have a large seed pod developing on the 'daisy' gardenia ('daisy' appears to be a rebloomer, as it is developing its third flush of blooms currently). The reciprocal cross was unsuccessful. As this is my first attempt at crossing gardenias, I am unsure of how to insure successful germination of the seed though.

I believe 'Chuck Hayes' would also be a good variety that would grow successfully in this area, although I have never tested this variety.

One day I asked my hubby to buy me a plant and to surprise me with it. I didn't give him a tip, hint or anything and one day he came home with two gardenias. The only thing I know about them is that they came from Lowe's.

I was very surprised at his selection because I had never mentioned gardenias to him nor did I know anything about them. Anyway, I planted them "high" in my flowerbed and the first winter they lost all their leaves and looked horrid.

The next spring I had shovel in hand and was ready to dig them out, but because DH had bought them I really didn't want to discard them, so I decided to "give them another chance."

I am pleased to report that during the spring they grew new leaves and had several blooms and lasted throughout the winter as well.

This is the third year I've had them and this spring they were GORGEOUS and full of blooms. Since the first winter, they have continued to grow and I smile everytime I look at them because they remind me of DH and the day he brought them to me as a surprise.

My gardenias are planted on the Northeast far end of my flowerbed. I also visited a fellow Gardenweb member's garden and she had a HUGE!!!! gardenia in her yard. I told her I had no idea they grew so large. Her gardenia was the size of a large tree.