Plant in full sun to light shade in a well-drained soil. As with other Rosemary it should prove resistant to deer and rabbit predation, tolerant to salt spray, alkaline soils and drought. Hardy to 15°F or slightly less – it has been rated to USDA 7B in trials in Great Britain, but Rosemary is usually recommended only down to zone 8.

This plant was carefully selected for the strongest most stable variegation by a Canadian grower as a sport of Rosmarinus officinalis 'Rex'. It is too new to cultivation to know its ultimate dimensions, but the cultivar 'Rex' is known to get to 5 feet tall and wide and this cultivar is noted as being more compact. This plant received US Plant Patent 19,949 on April 21, 2009 and is being marketed in the US by PlantHaven.

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 displayed on this page about Rosmarinus officinalis 'Gold Dust' PP19,949 is based on our research conducted about this plant from books in our nursery library as well as from information that is provided by reliable online resources. We also have included our own observations made about it as it grew in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers when we had them in our nursery field. We also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.