Hebe 'New Zealand Gold'
Evergreen Shrub with Golden Foliage
Transform your garden with Hebe 'New Zealand Gold', a compact evergreen shrub that brings year-round structure and elegant golden highlights to borders, containers, and formal gardens. This distinguished variety combines the classic appeal of small, glossy leaves with striking yellow-green stems and golden margins, creating a sophisticated alternative to traditional box hedging whilst offering exceptional versatility in garden design.
Key Features
- Plant Type: Hardy evergreen shrub
- Height: 1 metre tall
- Spread: 1 metre wide
- Foliage: Evergreen with golden margins
- Flowers: Small white spikes in early summer (when conditions are favourable)
- Hardiness: Hardy in the UK down to temperatures of -15 to -10 degrees Celcius (RHS hardiness rating H5)
- Growth Habit: Compact, rounded, bushy
Distinctive Golden Colouring
'New Zealand Gold' is renowned for its striking appearance, particularly when producing new growth. Fresh shoots emerge in brilliant golden-yellow colours, contrasting beautifully with the mature dark green foliage. The fresh shoots often appear golden yellow in colour, giving this variety its distinctive name and exceptional ornamental value.
Attractive Leaf Structure
The shrub features green glossy spear-shaped leaves to 1.2cm long, with a yellow-green margin on the younger leaves contrasting with the yellow stems. The small, dense foliage creates an attractive backdrop throughout the year, with small dark spear shaped leaves with attractive golden margins that provide consistent visual interest.
Compact, Structured Growth
This hardy shrub forms a glossy rounded ball with dense foliage and compact habit that resembles a rounded pillow. This naturally neat growth pattern makes it perfect for formal gardens and structured plantings where consistent form is desired.
Perfect Box Alternative
Known as the Boxwood imposter, this strong growing, compact Hebe is the perfect choice for hedging or topiary. The Hebe odora New Zealand Gold is becoming fashionable in the formal garden as an alternative to Box, offering similar structure with added colour interest and greater resilience.
Topiary and Formal Uses
Amenable to topiary to create a structured clipped touch to your garden, this variety responds well to pruning and shaping. Its dense growth habit and small leaves make it ideal for creating formal shapes, low hedges, or structured garden features.
Multiple Garden Applications
The versatility of these shrubs allows you to grow them in different ways. Use them for edging, and they're equally effective in borders, containers, and rockeries. An excellent choice to bring year round interest, form and structure to various garden styles.
Easy Care Requirements
Like all Hebe's, New Zealand Gold is an easy and low maintenance way to add some structure and interest to your garden. Easy to care for and suitable for low maintenance gardens, making it perfect for busy gardeners or those seeking reliable, trouble-free plants.
Minimal Fertiliser Needs
The hebe plant does not require a lot of care once it is established. Although the shrub doesn't need much in the way of fertiliser, you can apply some once a year in late winter or early spring prior to new growth.
Subtle Summer Blooms
White flowers appear in early summer, though the Hebe odora New Zealand Gold will flower but only when conditions are favourable. White flowers are carried in terminal spikes in early summer, providing a delicate complement to the golden foliage.
Foliage-Focused Appeal
This hardy shrub has a neat growth habit and rarely flowers, meaning the primary appeal lies in its exceptional foliage display rather than seasonal blooms. This makes it an excellent choice for gardeners seeking consistent year-round interest.
Soil and Position
Does well in rich and well-drained soil and does best in full sun, in soil that has been enriched with some garden compost. Requires a sheltered sunny position for optimal performance.
Drainage Requirements
The soil should not be waterlogged but should not dry out too quickly. Good drainage is essential, particularly during winter months, to prevent root problems and ensure healthy growth.
Spring Management
Apply annual feeding in late winter or early spring before new growth begins. This is also the ideal time for any pruning or shaping work, allowing the plant to produce fresh golden growth throughout the growing season.
Summer Care
Monitor soil moisture during dry periods, ensuring the plant doesn't become stressed. The golden foliage effect is most pronounced during active growing periods, so consistent care enhances the ornamental display.
Winter Protection
While hardy, young plants benefit from protection in exposed positions. Established plants are generally resilient, but good drainage becomes particularly important during winter months.
Formal Garden Features
Because of its compact habit, it is often used as a formal feature, such as lining a path or edging a garden bed. The consistent form and golden highlights make it perfect for creating structured garden elements.
Container Growing
Excellent for containers and patio displays where its compact size and year-round interest can be fully appreciated. The golden foliage provides seasonal colour variations that enhance container arrangements.
Mixed Border Integration
Works beautifully in mixed borders where its evergreen structure provides backbone planting, whilst the golden foliage adds colour contrast to flowering perennials and seasonal displays.
Why Choose 'New Zealand Gold'?
This exceptional variety offers the perfect combination of structural reliability, ornamental appeal, and low maintenance requirements. Great plants for providing evergreen structure, colour and form to garden borders all year around, making it an invaluable addition to both traditional and contemporary garden designs.
The golden foliage effect, combined with its naturally compact growth habit and tolerance of pruning, makes 'New Zealand Gold' an outstanding choice for gardeners seeking a distinctive alternative to traditional evergreen shrubs. Its versatility in formal and informal settings, coupled with minimal care requirements, ensures it will provide years of reliable garden performance.
Buying Shrubs from Jacksons Nurseries
At Jacksons Nurseries we sell a variety of shrubs both evergreen and deciduous with a variety of flowering times throughout the year. At certain times of the year our shrubs you buy from us may not look like the images shown on our website when deciduous leaves have fallen, the shrub has finished flowering or has been trimmed back.
Some leaves on evergreen shrubs can be damaged in winter by frost or harsh winds but in spring new leaves will readily replace those damaged. This is quite normal on many evergreen varieties and is preferable to plants grown with excessive protection that show cold shock once planted out and establish less satisfactory initially.
Availability: Stock availability figures are provided as a guide only. There is a delay between orders being placed and the plants being gathered by our pulling team. During this time it may be possible for a member of the public to purchase these plants from our Garden Centre, while this is rare it is a possibility and we will notify you of any problems as soon as possible. This figure may also include plants that have not yet be flagged as unsaleable.
Pre-order: Pre-order times are given as a guide only and may vary dependent on the growing season. Orders containing Pre-ordered products will be shipped as a single order when all items become available. Large orders may be part shipped, please contact us on 01782 502741 or email sales@jacksonsnurseries.co.uk.
* Please Note: Shrubs in 20 litre pots and above might require a pallet delivery starting at £79.99 per pallet. Depending on the exact pot size and height it may be possible to get approximately 5 plants per pallet at no extra cost. The maximum height we can dispatch on a pallet is 2.0m, this includes the height of the pallet and pot.
Shrubs are deciduous or evergreen woody plants, and often provide fragrant flowers, berries and foliage. They are good for structural framework, and they can provide a wonderful shelter and food source for wildlife.
Planting and Conditions
Container grown shrubs can be grown at any time of year. It is a little known fact that shrubs planted in the autumn and winter will be easier to look after than those planted in the spring and summer, because they will have time to establish and become hardy in the cooler months.
Plant the shrub at the same depth as it was in its original pot. Planting too deeply can result in root and stem rot.
One of the biggest causes of death in new shrubs is drought stress, so keep it well watered until it’s established.
Make sure you loosen the soil prior to planting. Most shrubs are tolerant of most soil types as long as it is fairly well draining.
Most shrubs will grow happily in containers, but they will be much more demanding on feeding and watering than shrubs in the ground would be. They will also need potting on every couple of years so that they don’t suffocate or become stunted in their pot.
Aftercare and Pruning
Once established, shrubs generally do not require much water. However, at first they need careful, frequent watering and should not be left to dry out.
Shrubs in the ground are generally not demanding and in most cases, annual feeding with general purpose fertilizer will suffice. Shrubs in containers may need more feeding; usually from early spring until late summer.
Shrubs also benefit from mulching in order to supress weeds, conserve moisture and provide vital nutrients. Mulch also greatly improves soil conditions. Shrubs can be mulched in late winter, after fertiliser has been applied, but it can be mulched through autumn to late spring as long as the ground is damp.
All shrubs benefit from dead-heading once spent flowers become apparent. Rhododendrons and Lilac especially benefit from the removal of dead flowers.
Some shrubs may show signs of reverted growth or ‘sporting’. This is where random shoots of different leaves associated with the plant’s parentage begin to appear. Most commonly this is where plants with variegated leaves sprout pure green growths instead of variegated ones.
To control reversion, remove reverted shoots promptly to discourage them. Reverted shoots are usually much more vigorous than the variegated ones, and thus should be completely pruned out and cut back into wood containing variegated foliage.
Potential Issues
Although shrubs are usually very robust garden plants, they can sometimes start to decline with no apparent or obvious reason.
This will start with browning leaves, which could indicate plant stress due to lack of water or waterlogging, an establishment failure or, in the worst case scenario, honey fungus. Another cause of leaf browning is a high salt content in the soil. This could be a natural occurrence, especially if you live near the ocean, or it could be from over fertilisation.
To remedy a high salt content, cut back on fertiliser and step up your watering regime for the next few weeks. If you live by the ocean, this will be harder to remedy—but stepping up your watering will help to wash some of the salt away all the same.