This white Parahebe is one of those plants that deserves to be much better known than it is. The deep green, glossy foliage is evergreen and very attractive, the delicate white blooms are lacy yet sturdy and incredibly profuse – and the plant simply goes with everything. You name me a plant that doesn’t look nice next to this Parahebe and I’ll name you a plant that I don’t want in my garden.
They bloom so constantly that it’s hard to find a good time to prune the darn things. At some point in late summer there are so many dead blooms mingled among the pretty fresh ones that I just take the hedging shears to it and bring it in by about 8” to take off all the old bloom spikes and “pinch” the leaf tips to keep it bushy and full. Parahebe linifolia gets to about 3.5’ tall and around here in coastal zone 9, larger with time.
They respond moderately well to hard pruning (pruning back to wood), returning with vigor 80% of the time, but I only do that if absolutely necessary to control size on an old specimen. You can usually shear it in stages to reduce size and have it look decent during the process (shearing in stages is where you shear back to where there’s only 3” of green growth left before you hit woody stems, let the plant fill in and create new growth on the inside of the plant, then prune again to bring it back in size even more. The whole point with this technique is that it has a chance to recover and make new green growth to sustain it through each prune).
They are not deer-resistant, not wind-tolerant, and need full sun to look good. But put it in a decent garden location and it will really shine for you, while asking for little in return.
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