Star Jasmine Plant Care: How To Grow Trachelospermum Jasminoides 

A Star Jasmine plant is a versatile one indeed. It’s most commonly known as a beautiful flowering vine but has many other uses. This is all about how to care for and grow Star Jasmine.

This twining plant isn’t a true jasmine, like Pink Jasmine or Common Jasmine, although the fragrant flowers would make you think otherwise. It’s in the same family as a few plants you might be familiar with oleander, plumeria, adenium, and vinca. 

• Botanical Name: Trachelospermum jasminoides
• Common Name: Star Jasmine, Confederate Jasmine, Chinese Star Jasmine
• Why It’s Popular: Easy! The abundance of sweetly scented star-like flowers, the gorgeous, glossy, dark green leaves, and its versatility. 

Ways to Grow Star Jasmine

It’s an excellent choice to use as an evergreen vine. It can be trained to grow on a trellis, over an arbor, as an espalier against a wall or fence, as a border plant or hedge, as a groundcover, and to spill over a wall. It can also be grown as a container plant.

Star Jasmine Traits

Size

A Star Jasmine plant can reach 25′ tall. It needs support to reach that height. Otherwise, it just flops back on itself. It’s a twining vine, so you’ll need to train and attach it right from the start. 

As it grows, it’ll attach to whatever structure on its own and need little guidance from you. It’s a great plant to grow on a chain link fence because it gives it something to grab onto and twine through without much training.

As a ground cover, it can be kept to 2-3′ as the tendrils will grow more along the ground rather than upwards. I’ve also seen it growing as a trimmed hedge, but keeping it the size you want takes regular pruning.

Growth Rate

How fast does Star Jasmine grow? If getting enough sun and water, then it’s fast growing. 

I would prune mine shortly after flowering and then lightly in early fall. By the next spring, it would have climbed back up to the top of the wall again.

Hardiness

• Star Jasmine Plants are hardy in USDA zones 8 -11. They can take temperatures down to 10-15 degrees Fahrenheit. 
• This plant adapts well to both heat and cold, but it won’t survive climates with harsh winters. Enter your zip code here to determine if it’ll grow where you live.
• Star Jasmine “Madison” is a slightly more cold-tolerant variety and is hardy in zones 7-10.

Star Jasmine Video Guide

Star Jasmine Care & Growing Tips

Sunlight

Star Jasmine takes the full sun on the coast of southern California (like Santa Barbara, where I used to live), or further up in the San Francisco Bay Area right through to Seattle.

In Arizona or other places with hot summers, it must be protected from full sun and does best in partial or bright shade.

Mine gets one hour of direct sun in the morning and a little late afternoon, but it’s bright all day. The more sun it gets, the more water it needs to keep it looking tip-top.

Watering

Star Jasmine does best with regular water, and how often depends on your climate. Here in the desert, I water my established Star Jasmine (which is on a drip) twice a week in the hotter months. 

If you have new plants, it’s a good idea to water them every other day (especially for the first growing season) until they get established.

Depending on your temperatures and rainfall amounts, regular might mean every 10-21 days. In a nutshell, you want to water when the top few inches of soil are dry.

It’s not a drought-tolerant plant, but it’s not water greedy either. The more sun and heat it gets, the more water it needs.

Star Jasmine is a popular landscape plant. Here we Answer Your Questions About Growing Star Jasmine.

Soil 

The Star Jasmine plant is fairly versatile regarding types of soil but prefers loamy, well-drained soils. When planting, I always amended the soil with a proportionate amount of local compost or some other organic material like leaf mold or worm compost.

If planting Star Jasmine in a container, use good quality organic potting soil and mix in some compost or other amendment. 

Fertilizing and Feeding

I’m unsure what the best fertilizer for a Star Jasmine plant is. I’ve maintained and planted many Star Jasmines and never fertilized them. They’ve always been very happy with a good dose of organic compost in late winter or early spring (depending on your climate zone) every year or 2.

I put a 4″ layer over the planting surface of mine here in Tucson in late winter, which not only nourishes it but holds in some moisture when the intensely hot and sunny summer rolls around. Composting every other year was fine along the coast in the San Franciso Bay Area, which is much cooler and way less sunny.

If you prefer an alternative feeding method, this all-purpose balanced fertilizer would be fine to apply to the soil after the plant is done flowering.

Best Time to Plant

Star Jasmine is best planted in spring or fall (with enough time to settle in before the below-freezing temps hit). The plants have an easier time settling in when the days are warm and the evenings are cool. 

You can plant in the summer, but you’ll have to water more as it’s establishing.

This guide on How To Plant Shrubs To Grow Successfully will give you details as to the steps.

Pests

The two pests I’ve seen infest Star Jasmine are mealy bugs and scale. This plant grows densely, so be sure to check the inner foliage and stems every now and then. Treating any pests from the get-go is best so those scale insects don’t spread.

If growing it in the South, I’ve heard that Japanese Beetles can be an issue.

Pruning

Star Jasmine has a somewhat wild growth habit. Those twining stems like to wander! It’s best pruned right after the big seasonal flowering. I won’t go into the specifics of pruning this plant here because I’ve written four posts on this topic already, which you’ll find in the pink box below.

When cut, a cut stem oozes out a milky sap, but it never irritated me. Be careful and protect yourself with gloves and long sleeves because it could irritate you. And you’ll need to clean your garden shears after pruning because they’ll be covered with dried sticky sap.

It can be pruned heavily as a border plant or lightly grown as a tall climbing vine. I prune mine when it’s through flowering and then do a light pruning in November to shape up if needed. I find this plant to be manageable and not too hard to prune.

Flowering

Oh yes, it does! A profusion of starry white fragrant flowers covers the plant in late spring or early summer, depending on your climate zone. 

The flowers are sweetly scented, though not as strong as Pink Jasmine. The flowering process lasts for a couple of months.

You might get a bit of intermittent flowering in summer into early fall, but the big show comes earlier in the season. 

When the glossy light green new growth appears, and the plant is covered in blooms, it’s a beautiful sight to see!

How to Grow Star Jasmine

In Pots

Star Jasmine does fine in pots. What size pot you need depends on the grow pot size and whether you’re planting it solo or with other plants.

For instance, if you’re planting a 5-gallon Star Jasmine to grow on a trellis, you’d want a pot no smaller than 22”w by 22” deep.

If you’re planting a 1-gallon Star Jasmine by itself, a 14” x 14” pot to start it off would be fine. 

When planting a smaller landscape plant in a bigger pot, I’d fill in with annuals the first season or two so it didn’t look so bare.

Be sure to use good quality potting soil like this one or this one. Add some compost or organic materials for richness and to aid in drainage, and you’ll have a well-suited potting mix.

In terms of watering, be mindful because plants in containers typically need watering more often than those in the ground.

On a Trellis or Arbor

A Star Jasmine plant is great on a trellis or over an arbor. You need to train and guide it in the early stages, but after a while will twine and attach on its own. 

If you want to use it as a wall cover, it’ll need a training method like this one or this one and as additional support. 

Hedge

Yes, as evidenced by a couple of photos in this post, it’s used as a hedge. In my professional gardening days in the SF Bay Area, one of my clients had a low Star Jasmine hedge lining her long walkway up to the house.

It was somewhat of a pain to maintain as it needed pruning three or four times a year to keep the twining stems in check. They wandered into the walkway and the beds. I think other plants are much better suited maintenance-wise to use as a hedge.

That being said, it’s very pretty and grows fast. If you want to use it, go for it!

Ground Cover

It’s a great ground cover where you want more height and volume than commonly used plants like Creeping thyme, Sedum Angelina, Vinca minor, Ajuga reptans, etc. 

It reaches 3′ fairly fast, and if you keep it pruned to 2′, you’ll get more lateral growth. 

Star Jasmine in Winter

I’ve always grown it in climates with warmer winters – the SF Bay Area, Santa Barbara, and Tucson. I never did anything regarding winter care except composting/mulching every year or two.

If needed, I did a light prune in early fall to shape or tame any crazy tendrils. 

Don’t be alarmed if you see some Star Jasmine leaves turning red in fall and winter. The color change is a reaction to the lower temperatures in the colder months. Most of them will drop off in spring as the temperatures warm and the new leaves appear.

Is Star Jasmine Poisonous? 

Trachelospermum jasminoides is non-toxic, according to the ASPCA website. It does emit a sap when cut, which has never irritated me. Be careful, though, because it could cause skin irritation for you.

Care Guides On Other Vines: Bougainvillea Care, Pink Jasmine Care, Cup Of Gold Vine Care 

Things to Love About Star Jasmine

• It’s versatility. It can be used in so many ways.
• It’s easy to maintain. It’s generally manageable and takes pruning very well.
• The foliage is a beautiful dark glossy green contrasting with lighter green new foliage.
• You can find it in garden centers as well as big-box stores. If you don’t have any close, here’s a Star Jasmine you can order online. 
• This plant also comes in a variegated form if you prefer. It’s not as easy to find, though.
• And, of course, the strong fragrance of the starry white flowers.

Star Jasmine care is simple, and those fragrant flowers and glossy dark green foliage make this plant oh-so appealing. Give one a try!

Note: This post was previously published. It was updated on 4/12/2023.

Happy gardening,

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