Thursday 2 July 2020

The versatile Pittosporum Golf Ball

Giving these Pittosporum tenuifolium Golf Balls a trim this morning, I reflected that while it's a pretty unassuming plant, it's also probably the first shrub on the team sheet for most of the planting schemes I design.


It seems to do well in the London clay soil, and is happy in anything except deep shade. They're good mixers too: the bright-but-not-showy green leaves blend well with other greens and different textures. They can be clipped, not too tightly, into spheres, or left to grow out into shaggier spheres - they're a naturally tidy plant.

And versatile: I've planted them as standalone shrubs, as hedges, as focal points in a border, and as Buxus substitutes. And they're evergreen, so look good all the year round.