Few native shrubs earn their keep the way wax myrtle does. This fast-growing broadleaf evergreen shrugs off salt spray, soggy ground, drought, poor soil, and coastal wind, then rewards you with aromatic olive-green foliage, smooth pale bark, and clusters of waxy blue-gray berries that feed birds all winter. Across the warm-winter South it is one of the most planted hedge and screen plants going, and for good reason: it grows three to five feet a year, takes hard pruning without sulking, and asks almost nothing of you once it settles in. Whether you want a dense privacy wall in a season or two, a graceful multi-trunk small tree limbed up to show off its bark, or a tough background plant for a spot where nothing else thrives, wax myrtle (Morella cerifera, formerly Myrica cerifera) is hard to beat.
This guide covers everything you need to grow it well, from the male-and-female berry question that trips up new gardeners, to spacing for a fast screen, to keeping its suckering habit in bounds.
Wax Myrtle Is a Tough Native Evergreen With Many Uses
Wax myrtle, also called southern bayberry, is a broadleaf evergreen shrub or small tree in the bayberry family (Myricaceae). It is native to the United States from New Jersey south to Florida and west to Texas, ranging on into Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. In the wild it grows in wetlands, swamps, pine flatwoods, and coastal dunes, which tells you a great deal about how forgiving it is in the garden.
Left alone it forms a dense, rounded, many-stemmed shrub. Limbed up, it becomes an attractive small tree to 15 or 20 feet, occasionally taller, with twisted trunks and smooth bark in a pale gray that is almost white. The narrow leaves are glossy, olive green, and three to five inches long, dotted on the underside with tiny yellow resin glands. Crush a leaf and you get the distinctive spicy bayberry candle fragrance that gives the plant its name. That aroma is one of its charms, but it comes from flammable aromatic compounds, which is worth keeping in mind near the house.
A few qualities make this plant especially useful:
- Fast growth. Three to five feet of new height in a single season is normal in good conditions, so a usable screen arrives quickly.
- Salt and wind tolerance. It takes sea spray, salty roadside soil, and stiff coastal wind, making it a top pick for beachfront and oceanfront plantings.
- Wide soil tolerance. It handles wet swampy ground and dry upland sites alike, and because it fixes its own nitrogen it is unbothered by poor, sterile, or infertile soil.
- Aromatic foliage and berries. Pleasant to brush past, and a natural deterrent to deer and rabbits, which tend to leave the fragrant leaves alone.
- Wildlife value. The waxy berries feed birds through the lean winter months, and the foliage gives year-round cover and nesting sites.
The plant also has a long history of use. Its waxy berries were boiled to make bayberry candles, soaps, and sealing wax in colonial times, and Native peoples used parts of the plant medicinally and as a textile dye.
Wax Myrtle Grows in Zones 7 Through 11
Wax myrtle is winter hardy in USDA zones 7 through 11, where it thrives on heat, humidity, and coastal conditions. It is fully evergreen through most of that range. In the cooler end, around zone 7, it behaves as a semi-evergreen and can drop some or all of its leaves in a hard cold snap. The leaves brown and may fall, but the stem tissue is not usually killed, and growth resumes in spring.
If you garden in a borderline-cold zone, give the plant a protected spot out of harsh wind, and expect it to look rougher after a severe winter than it does on the Gulf Coast. For gardeners pushing the cold limit, the cultivar ‘Hiwassee’ is notably more cold hardy and has shrugged off temperatures down to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit without leaf burn.
Wax Myrtle Takes Full Sun to Partial Shade
This is an adaptable plant for light. It grows in full sun, partial shade, dappled shade through an upper canopy, and even the difficult conditions of dry shade. A minimum of four to five hours of direct sun a day is ideal.
Sun does affect the look of the plant. Specimens grown in full sun develop denser, fuller foliage and make tighter screens, while those in more shade grow looser and more open. If a thick privacy hedge is your goal, give it as much sun as you can. If you are filling a shadier corner, it will still grow, just with a more airy, see-through habit.
Wax Myrtle Tolerates Almost Any Soil
One of the great strengths of wax myrtle is how little it cares about soil. It does best in slightly acidic, sandy, well-drained ground, but it adapts to a remarkable range: wet swampy margins, occasionally flooded sites, clay, loam, and dry sterile uplands all work. Because it fixes atmospheric nitrogen through its roots, it does not depend on rich or fertile soil to grow vigorously.
That tolerance makes it a problem-solver. Use it where drainage is poor and other shrubs rot, along a pond or stream margin that floods then dries, on a salted roadside, on a windy bank for erosion control, or in a coastal bed where salt spray scorches lesser plants. The one soil condition to watch is high pH. In alkaline soil the plant is prone to iron chlorosis, a yellowing of the leaf tissue between the veins. Wax myrtle is happiest acidic, so avoid limey soils or correct them if you can.
How to Plant Wax Myrtle
Plant wax myrtle in spring or fall, in a site with full sun to partial shade where the roots will not be disturbed later. The roots are relatively shallow, so resist the urge to underplant with annuals and perennials or to dig nearby; root disturbance triggers a flush of suckers you will then have to manage.
To plant:
- Dig the planting hole two to three times as wide as the rootball and no deeper than the rootball itself. A wide hole loosens the surrounding soil for the roots to spread into; a hole no deeper than the rootball keeps the plant from settling too low.
- Amend the soil you removed if your site needs help with drainage or moisture retention, though in decent ground the plant will manage with little amendment.
- Loosen any circling roots with your fingers, then set the plant so the top of the rootball sits just at or slightly above the surrounding grade. Add soil under the rootball if you need to raise it.
- Hold the plant straight and backfill, tamping gently as you go. Fill the hole halfway, water to settle out air pockets, then finish backfilling and water again.
- Build a low soil berm in a ring at the edge of the planting hole to catch and hold water, and spread a layer of mulch over the root zone, keeping the mulch a few inches off the trunk.
In cooler zones, choose a spot sheltered from cold wind. And because the foliage is flammable, give plants room away from the house and other structures rather than crowding them against the walls.
Spacing Wax Myrtle for a Hedge or Screen
Wax myrtle is most often planted as a screen or informal hedge, and spacing is where people most often go wrong. Space the plants according to how fast you want the screen to fill and how large the plants will ultimately grow.
- For a fast privacy screen of full-size plants, space them about six to ten feet apart. Tighter spacing, toward six feet, closes the gaps sooner; wider spacing, toward ten feet, gives each plant room to reach full width without crowding.
- For a denser, faster wall, stagger plants in two offset rows rather than a single straight line. The overlap fills sightlines quickly and creates more depth.
- For dwarf cultivars used as a low hedge or foundation planting, space them according to their mature width, often three to five feet.
Remember that wax myrtle reaches 15 to 20 feet tall and nearly as wide at full size, so a row planted too tightly will eventually grow into a thick, tall mass that needs regular shearing to keep in scale. Plan for the mature size, not the size of the plant in the pot.
Watering and Feeding Wax Myrtle
Young, newly planted wax myrtles need consistently moist soil while they establish their root systems. Keep the rootball and surrounding soil moist, watering at the drip line rather than against the trunk, and water deeply but less often rather than with frequent shallow sprinklings.
Once established, the plant becomes exceptionally drought tolerant and will also handle the opposite extreme, sitting happily in moist to soggy ground. A useful rule for an establishing plant is a deep soak every ten to fourteen days during dry spells, adjusting for your soil and weather. Mature plants in the ground often need no supplemental water at all except in extended drought.
Feeding is rarely necessary. Thanks to nitrogen fixation, wax myrtle grows well in poor soil without fertilizer, and overfeeding does more harm than good. If a plant is growing slowly or looks pale, a balanced fertilizer in early spring can push more vigorous growth. Where iron chlorosis shows up in alkaline soil, supplemental iron and sulfur, rather than more nitrogen, are the appropriate fix because they address the actual problem.
Getting Berries Requires Both Male and Female Plants
This is the single most important thing to understand before you buy. Wax myrtle is dioecious, meaning male and female flowers grow on separate plants. Small, inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers appear in early spring, roughly March to April in warm climates and later, into June, in cooler ones. Only pollinated female plants produce the waxy gray-blue berries, and a female will only set fruit if a male plant is nearby to pollinate her.
In practical terms, if berries matter to you, plant more than one wax myrtle so you have both sexes present. Young nursery plants are difficult to sex by eye, so planting a group raises the odds of getting both. The berries form in late summer and ripen through fall, clustering on the previous season’s growth and persisting into winter, which is exactly when birds need them most.
Two consequences follow from where the fruit forms. First, because the berries develop on old wood, heavy pruning removes next season’s fruit, so time and limit your cuts if you want berries. Second, if you are growing wax myrtle purely as a clipped formal hedge, you may get little or no fruit anyway, since regular shearing keeps removing the wood that would bear it.
Pruning Wax Myrtle as a Hedge or Small Tree
Wax myrtle responds beautifully to pruning and frequent shearing, which is why it is so versatile. The right approach depends entirely on the form you want.
As an informal screen or hedge, let the plant keep its natural rounded shape and simply trim to control size and density. It tolerates heavy shearing and can be kept as a tight formal hedge or allowed to grow into a looser, airier wall.
As a small multi-trunk tree, limb it up: remove the lower branches to expose the smooth, pale gray bark and the twisted trunks, and thin the canopy to your taste. This is one of the most attractive ways to grow it, turning a workhorse shrub into a sculptural specimen for a deck, patio, or focal point in the bed.
As a single-trunk tree, select one strong stem and remove the rest, then prune up the canopy as it grows.
For heavy pruning, whether to reduce size or to retrain the plant to tree form, work in late winter while the plant is dormant. Light shaping and the removal of dead, diseased, crossing, or rubbing branches can be done as needed through the year. Keep in mind the trade-off with fruit: because berries form on old growth, the harder you cut, the fewer berries you will get the following season.
Managing Suckers and Spread
Wax myrtle spreads by root suckers and, in ideal conditions, can form sizable colonies or thickets over time. In a naturalized planting or on a slope where you want erosion control and dense cover, this is a feature. In a tidy bed it is a chore.
To keep a plant in bounds, prune out suckers as they appear rather than letting them get established. Disturbing the roots, by digging nearby or planting over them, provokes more suckering, so the simplest prevention is to leave the root zone undisturbed and mulched. For stubborn spreading, you can install a root barrier to limit underground travel, or maintain a mulched, regularly edged ring around the plant. Mowing or trimming the edge of the colony also keeps a clump from creeping outward. None of this is difficult; it just needs doing on a regular schedule rather than waiting until a thicket has formed.
Common Wax Myrtle Problems
Wax myrtle is genuinely low-trouble. It has no serious diseases or insect pests, and you can largely leave it to its own devices. The issues that do come up are minor and easy to read:
- Iron chlorosis. Yellowing of the leaf tissue between the veins, caused by high-pH soil locking up iron. Correct with iron and sulfur and by avoiding alkaline conditions.
- Cold damage. In the cooler zones, browning leaves and partial defoliation after a hard freeze. The stems usually survive and the plant leafs back out in spring.
- Leaf spot and leaf anthracnose. Occasional and rarely serious. Watering at the base and keeping the foliage dry reduces the chance of fungal problems. Several dwarf cultivars are bred for leaf-spot resistance.
- Minor pests. Whiteflies and spider mites turn up infrequently and are seldom damaging.
- Suckering. Not a disease, but the most common complaint, covered above.
One non-pest caution bears repeating: the aromatic foliage is flammable, so in fire-prone areas keep wax myrtle out of the defensible space immediately around the house and choose low-flammability plants for those nearest spots.
Choosing the Right Wax Myrtle Cultivar
Because breeders have selected for size and form, you can match a cultivar to the job rather than fighting a full-size plant into a small space. A few widely grown selections:
- ‘Wolf Bay’. Tall, thick, and upright to around 20 feet. A good choice for a substantial screen or windbreak.
- ‘Hiwassee’. Larger and notably more cold hardy than the species, tolerating temperatures down to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit without leaf burn. The pick for gardeners at the cold edge of the range.
- ‘Fairfax’. A compact, mounding form to roughly six to eight feet, with smaller, lighter green leaves. It colonizes quickly, so site it where spread is welcome.
- ‘Don’s Dwarf’. Compact to about three to five feet tall and wide. A female cultivar resistant to leaf spot, useful for low hedges and foundations.
- ‘Tom’s Dwarf’. Similar in size to ‘Don’s Dwarf’ but a male selection, also leaf-spot resistant. Pairing a male dwarf with a female dwarf is a tidy way to get berries on a small-scale planting.
It is also worth knowing the close relatives in the bayberry family, since they suit different conditions. Dwarf bayberry (Morella pumila) stays under three feet and spreads to form colonies in coastal pinelands. Northern bayberry (Morella pensylvanica) is far more cold hardy, thriving in zones 3 to 6, and is the bayberry to reach for in cold-winter regions where southern wax myrtle will not survive. Swamp or evergreen bayberry (Morella caroliniensis) has the largest leaves of the group and favors wet coastal flatlands.
Putting Wax Myrtle to Work in the Landscape
Once you account for its size and spreading habit, wax myrtle slots into more roles than almost any other native shrub. Use a row of it as a fast privacy screen or informal hedge, a windbreak on an exposed site, or a salt-tolerant buffer along a coastal property or a road that gets salted in winter. Limb a specimen up into a small tree to anchor a bed or shade a patio. Mass it on a bank for erosion control, set it at a pond or stream margin that floods and dries, or fold it into the back of a native, butterfly, or pollinator garden where it doubles as a larval host for the red-banded hairstreak and a winter food source for birds.
Give it sun for density, room for its mature spread, acidic soil to keep it green, and a male nearby if you want the berries, and a young wax myrtle will turn into a screen, a tree, or a wildlife hedge faster and with less fuss than nearly anything else you could plant.