Jasmine
Poet's Jasmine
Jasminum officinale
Also called French Perfume Jasmine — a graceful deciduous climber whose airy white star-flowers carry the clean, sweet jasmine that perfumers and gardeners have loved for centuries.
Scent Profile
What it smells like
Perfume unfolds in three movements. Close your eyes and follow the scent from first breath to the trace it leaves behind.
Top note
A clean, lifted sweetness — light and airy, the first bright note of a summer evening.
Heart note
A pure, tender jasmine with a soft green freshness, delicate and true, never heavy.
Base note
A gentle, lingering musk that trails softly, leaving the garden faintly scented at dusk.
Care
How it grows
- Light
- Full sun to partial shade
- Water
- Moderate, let dry between waterings
- Bloom season
- Summer into early fall
- Mature size
- 10–15 ft climbing vine
- Hardiness
- Zones 7–10
Care notes
Tending this plant
Soil
Any well-drained soil suits it — it is famously unfussy, but a loamy mix enriched with compost gives the most generous bloom. Avoid waterlogged ground.
Feeding
A balanced slow-release feed in spring and a light liquid bloom feed once in mid-summer keeps it flowering freely. Overfed plants grow leaves at the expense of scent.
Pruning
Prune hard in late winter — it flowers on new wood, so cutting back to a strong framework rewards you with vigorous, flower-laden new growth.
Winter care
Deciduous and very hardy. It will lose its leaves and die back in cold winters, then resprout reliably from the base. No protection needed in the Tri-Valley; a light mulch over the crown suffices where winters are colder.
Container growing
Happy in a large tub with a trellis or obelisk to climb. A 16–20 inch pot with free-draining mix suits a mature vine; water a little more often than in-ground plants and feed through the growing season.
Where it grows
A California story
Also known as French Perfume Jasmine, the jasmine of Persian poets and English cottage gardens — prized for centuries for the purity of its fragrance. In the warm Tri-Valley it climbs with grace, its slender vines festooned with white star-flowers through the long dry summer.
