Plant in full sun. As with other Rosemary it is resistant to deer and rabbit predation, tolerant to salt spray, alkaline soils and drought. Hardy to 15°F. Cascades beautifully over walls with a hummocky growth habit.

This plant was discovered in 1991 by Phil Johnson who found it growing in the crack of a dry stack retaining wall he had built in 1984 in the garden of a client in Orinda, Calif. Phil named the plant for his Black Labrador Princess Irene, who was also known as Renzels, using 'Renzels' as the patented cultivar name and Irene as a marketing name. On May 2, 1995 is was granted US Plant Patent PP9,124, which expired in April 2014. We were first licensed to grow this plant in 1996 and will continue to grow this very nice rosemary cultivar, though it is no longer protected by a patent. When we first grew this plant it was thought to be a low ground hugging groundcover variety but in time have noted it getting taller - still very nice as a groundcover but not as low as some others such as the paler blue flowered Rosmarinus 'Lockwood de Forest'.

Rosemary is native to the dry, rocky areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. The name for the genus comes from the Latin name first published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 for this aromatic shrub means sea dew, derived from the Latin words 'ros' meaning "dew" and 'marinus' meaning of the sea." The specific epithet is the Latin word that signifies a plant sold as a medicinal herb.

Recent DNA analysis now shows the genus Rosmarinus to be fit squarely into the massive Salvia genus, which already has about 1,000 species. Since the specific epithet "officinalis" is already used in the genus Salvia, the new name for our common rosemary is now officially Salvia rosmarinus. Joining Rosmarinus in this move to Salvia is Perovskia and the little know genera Dorystaechas, Meriandra and Zhumeria. This change was published in an article by University of Nebraska biologist Bryan T. Drew, Jesús González-Gallegos, Chun-Lei Xiang, Ricardo Kriebel, Chloe Drummond, Jay Walker and Kenneth Sytsma titled "Salvia united: The greatest good for the greatest number" in the February 2017 issue of Taxon 66(1):133-145. For the sake of our customers and ourselves, we continue to list the Rosemary in the genus Rosmarinus! 

The information about Rosmarinus officinalis Irene ['Renzels'] that is displayed on this web page is based on research conducted in our nursery's horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We will also include observations made about this plant as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens that we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We also incorporate comments that we receive from others and welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they share cultural information that aids others growing this plant.