Portuguese Laurel Cherry - Planting in the Garden

Portuguese Laurel Cherry (Prunus lusitanica) is widely popular for evergreen hedges due to its dense foliage, but it's also excellent for creating striking, year-round focal points as individual plants in your garden. Nurseries offer a wide variety of cultivars that differ in growth habit and leaf size, ensuring there's a suitable option for almost any garden space.

A significant advantage of this plant species is its excellent tolerance to pruning. This allows you to easily shape the plant to your specific preferences or to suit the existing conditions of your garden.

Choose a sunny and wind-protected location for your Portuguese Laurel Cherry with humus-rich and nutrient-rich soil. However, most varieties are so undemanding that they will thrive without problems in almost all locations.

Before planting, you should prepare your bed: carefully remove all weeds and loosen the soil. Depending on the soil conditions you find in your bed, you should work compost, fresh potting soil, and/or other organic fertilizers (such as rock dust, bone meal, horn shavings) into the soil.

If any weeds have already established themselves in the pot, you should, of course, remove them. Before planting, you can gently loosen the root ball and give it another thorough watering.

Place the plant into the prepared planting hole and fill the gaps with soil. Gently tamp down the soil so that the root ball makes contact with the soil everywhere and no air pockets form.

If you didn't mix in fertilizer beforehand, you can apply some after planting and lightly rake it in.

(Please note the dosage recommendations on the packaging of the fertilizer you purchased.)

You definitely need to thoroughly water the plant at its new location. Depending on the weather, you should water your Portuguese Laurel Cherry as needed, especially in the first few weeks after planting and during midsummer. These plants are also very sensitive to prolonged drought in winter: the soil should not dry out for extended periods, even during the colder months!

Please also pay attention to the instructions on the plant label of your purchased variety.