Favourite plants in my Perth garden - Tuberose

If you love scented gardens, night-scented gardens, white colour themed gardens or growing fragrant flowers specifically to impart your home with natural fragrances, you absolutely must add the Tuberose to your collection of garden plants. If you need to have plants in your garden that can survive and thrive in extreme summer heat, the Tuberose is also a great choice for you.

The Tuberose is a fragrant flower of significance to the perfumery industry and many Asian cultures. Flowers that are night-scented or are more fragrant at night often seem to have white flowers, but there are cultivars of the Tuberose in pastel colours and also a single flower form, but it appears that none of these breeds have ever been put through to complex and expensive process of being imported into Australia through quarantine. If you have any coloured or single Tuberose bulbs or plants inside Australia I would love to know about it, so please leave a comment. Anyway, I will assume that for Australian gardeners I only need to discuss the Tuberose variety that I grow, which is the variety with creamy-white double flowers named The Pearl. The botanical name of the plant is a bit of confusion too. Originally it was known as Polianthes tuberosa, then for reasons unknown to me the botanical world renamed it Agave amica, but now it seems to have gone back to its original botanical name.

The Tuberose I grow in Perth, Western Australia has double creamy-white flowers that are very fragrant, especially at night, and it can be used as a cut flower. It is wonderful as a cut flower because it can perfume the entire house; no need to buy artificial fragrances for the home when you have this plant blooming. The Tuberose thrives in the summer heat with regular watering and regular fertilizer, blooming in late summer into autumn, potentially into winter if you plant it or move the tub you grow it in to a warm north-facing spot (moving your pot plants around to make the most of changing seasons is a great idea and worth a little time and effort). The Tuberose is native to Mexico and it was cultivated by the Aztecs, but it currently has an important place in Chinese, Indian, Indonesian and other Asian cultures, known by the names Rajanigandha Nishigandha, YeLaiXiang, YueXiaXiang and bunga sedap malam. When I sold this plant from home I met buyers from all over the world, including migrants from South Africa, so this plant seems to have a global appeal, which makes the alck of recognition of this plant within Australia seem odd. I think the reason why this plant is never sold as a growing plant in garden centres is that it dies back in winter and it can take two years to bloom, so there's a big risk of disgruntled customers returning plants that they do not understand. The Indian Vikaspedia has an incredibly detailed section about commercial growing of the tuberose that might be useful to home growers. Last time I checked that article included medicinal uses fir the Tuberose in traditional Indian medicine, but I want to make it clear that I am NOT recommedning these uses for the plant. The spicy fragrance has been used by the French perfume industry dating back a very long time, so it has been known to European cultures over centuries.

How to grow it? This is the tricky part that I still do not fully understand. In the growing season keep it regularly fertilised with a fertiliser made specifically for flowers or roses. Unlike many garden plants, I have never seen Tuberose plants die from extreme summer heat, so regular watering in the warm growing seasons is good, but not crucial to keep it alive. Tuberose likes a somewhat acidic growing medium, so I grow mine in tubs with potting mix combined with well-rotted cow manure. Tuberose is a bulb plant that produces a cluster of bulblets that you can snap apart and plant separately or plant as a whole. Once each bulblet has flowered it will not flower again, and possibly will die or shrink, but if you leave the whole clump planted it will die back in colder temeratures and regrow next summer from fresh bulblets. If you have ever grown bearded irises, this plant behaviour might sound familiar.

Is it best to leave it in planted permanently or dig it up each year? I think that depends on whether you need to keep track of bulbs or protect them from frosts or excessive damp that might damage them. Is it best to break up clumps and plant the bulblets individually? Depends. You can grow many small plants by planting out individual bulblets, but they seem to take two or more years to grow plants big enough to produce flowers. I also found that if I plant out lots of small bulblets in a garden bed, they just seem to disappear without trace, possibly from new shoots being eaten by snails and slugs as they emerge from the soil. Keep these pests away from the Tuberose. Is it best to grow the Tuberose in garden beds or in pots or tubs? I always have good clumps of Tuberose planted permanently in a large attractive plastic tub, which will appear empty if or when the Tuberose dies down in winter to spring (but if moved to a warm spot can be kept going all year). I have met people who claim they have had good luck growing Tuberose in garden beds, as an accompaniment to rose bushes. The advantage to letting Tuberose go dormant in a cool spot in winter is that you can dig up the bulb cluster to transplant, give to friends or sell to customers. Text and photograps are all Copyright Caroline M. Wright 2026.