How to Plant and Care for Oleanders

February 02, 2022

Bright and beautiful, oleanders are a delight to have in the garden. Find out how to plant and care for these attractive shrubs in our simple guide on oleander plant care, so you can make the most of their blooms every year.

Where to Plant Oleander Shrubs

To give your plant the best opportunity to blossom, place it in the hottest, sunniest area of your garden. These non-native plants are originally from much hotter, drier climates so they need as much sun as possible and are very weather-sensitive. Our more recent summers have been much warmer than usual which has led to these shrubs being laden with flowers, but the colder and wetter a summer is, the less chance of successful flowering.

How Often to Water Oleander Plants

These pretty plants need feeding and watering well in summer as their growth period happens between May and October, before they slow down for the winter. As they’re from a very dry climate they will survive in long, dry conditions, but they’ll thrive if well fed and watered.

They also need the right nutrients to flourish. Use a good quality general purpose fertiliser in spring, then once the buds appear in early summer, use a high potash feed like tomato feed to encourage flowering.

When planted in well-drained soil, oleanders can take short exposure to temperatures as low as -5°C. However, in winter they don’t grow very much, so we recommend moving them.

Are All Oleander Plants Poisonous?

Some websites report oleander to be very toxic, but a lot of common garden plants are also highly toxic if ingested, such as daffodil bulbs, foxgloves, and poinsettia.

If you’re wondering how toxic oleander is, there’s no real need to worry. You’d have to eat a lot of leaves or come into contact with an extreme amount of sap to come to serious harm.

Here’s our advice for oleanders