Rosemary ‘Mozart’ combines ornamental and culinary qualities in the one, upright growing, small shrub. Everyone knows how useful rosemary is as an addition to roast lamb, or to provide fragrant skewer sticks for kebabs on the barbecue, but it also makes an attractive ornamental shrub for the garden.
For any rosemary to prosper the requirements are excellent drainage and lots of sunshine. As with other rosemarys, ‘Mozart’ is drought tolerant and able to grow happily near the sea and thrives on dry banks far inland too, for it’s cold hardy. It pays to remember when planting in dry situations that even drought tolerant plants will need extra watering during the first few months when the root system is getting established.
This is a handsome shrub to grow as part of a not too formal, mixed hedge. Try it with other multi-purpose shrubs such as bay, which also has pleasantly fragrant (and useful in cooking) foliage, and with a little clipping they can be kept to the same height. For a Mediterranean effect, mix Rosemary ‘Mozart’ with lemons and limes, lavenders and olives.
Because Rosemary ‘Mozart’ clips into formal shapes so easily it can be used to provide a formal touch among a garden of herbs or a vegetable garden. There’s the added bonus that clipping a rosemary hedge becomes a gardening task to look forward to, as being enveloped in the cloud of scent while you wield the hedge shears is one of nature’s delights.
Rosemary ‘Mozart’ also mingles successfully with small shrubs such as hebes - try small growing, purple-blue flowered Hebe ‘Caledonia’ or larger, bold flowered ‘Wiri Port’. It’s attractive too as a background to perennials such as dwarf growing agapanthus, brightly coloured alstroemerias, and those with bold foliage such as Centaurea ‘Gold Bullion’ and silver-grey leafed Stachys byzantina, lambs ears.
It’s also fun to mix ‘Mozart’ with other varieties of rosemary in a sunny corner of the garden. There are prostrate and low growing varieties, some with pink flowers, and a gold and green variegated form too. They all share that alluringly fragrant foliage.
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Schemes & Themes
using Liddle Wonder Plants