Close-up of Tiger's Eye ivy leaves

Hedera helix 'Tiger's Eye'

9x9cm
€6,90
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Close-up of Tiger's Eye ivy leaves

Hedera helix 'Tiger's Eye'

€6,90
Organic
Sustainable
Locally grown

Hedera helix 'Tiger's Eye' is a distinctive evergreen ivy with bold golden-yellow and green variegated leaves that brighten shaded areas throughout the year. 


The leaves are small to medium-sized, leathery and glossy, typically displaying three to five shallow, triangular lobes with gently undulating margins. New growth emerges bright golden-yellow before maturing to a rich blend of chartreuse, gold and green, with the intensity of variegation influenced by light levels.

Like the species, juvenile stems produce adventitious aerial rootlets that enable the plant to cling to walls, tree trunks and other vertical surfaces. If allowed to mature into its adult phase, the plant develops self-supporting, woody flowering stems bearing unlobed, ovate to rhomboid leaves, followed by rounded black berries that are an important winter food source for birds.

Ideal as a climber or ground cover, it provides year-round colour and texture for walls, fences, containers and woodland planting schemes.


Check out our Ivy: Summer Care Guide

Flowering December
Exposure Half Sun/Half Shade
Frost Tolerance -23.5°C
Size 2m H x 1m W
Soil All types
Origin Europe
€6,90
6 left

🪴9x9 cm

🚂 Ships across EU
🌱 Grown in our nursery

Can be used to make laundry detergent!

Size
Gardening Tips

☀️ Afternoon shade or sheltered beneath a tree canopy will allow it to thrive — it is otherwise perfectly hardy and drought-resistant. Plant in Autumn for best resilience
🌿 Suitable as an evergreen climber, ground cover or container specimen, 'Tiger's Eye' is particularly effective for brightening shaded walls, underplanting trees, softening hard landscaping and providing year-round foliage contrast in woodland, cottage and contemporary gardens.
✂️ Regular pruning maintains a compact habit and encourages fresh, brightly coloured juvenile growth..

The Botany

Its five-lobed, arrowhead-shaped leaves carry a distinctive central macule of light green to yellow-green, lending the foliage a faintly luminous quality that earns the cultivar its name.

It originated as a sport, discovered in 1980 by Ken Frieling of Glasshouse Works in Ohio, and is a highly branched variety producing exceptionally dense, layered foliage.

The colour is at its most vivid in cooler, richer soils, but the characteristic variegation will hold even in areas that are more exposed to the sun, if in a subtler register.

The dense evergreen foliage provides valuable year-round shelter for insects, birds and small mammals. If permitted to flower, the late-season nectar-rich blooms are highly attractive to bees, hoverflies and other pollinating insects at a time when few other woody plants are in bloom. The berries, ripening in late winter, are consumed by thrushes, blackbirds and other bird species.

The Myth

Ivies belong to the Araliaceae family, making them relatives of Ginseng and Fatsia.

Hedera helix is a family that naturally produces mutations, isolated by botanists or plant nursery owners and published in a recognized journal — the RHS yearly cultivar publication, for instance.

'Tiger's Eye' is a natural mutation of the botanical variety found in gardens and forests across the entire temperate Eurasian zone of the Northern Hemisphere.

Any and all varieties of 'Tiger's Eye' are cuttings of the original mutation, as cross-pollination is exceedingly difficult within the Hedera family. The experiments often result in the mutation reverting to its botanical base, losing all of its peculiar particularities.

Ivy is so interesting — I worked for a few years as watchful guardian and caretaker of the largest ivy collection in the world and have come to really love the family.

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