Pandan (Pandanus amaryllifolius): Growing the Fragrant Leaf of Asian Cooking

Pandanus amaryllifolius is a low-growing plant (under a metre) with long, narrow, blade-like leaves and woody aerial roots. It can be grown as a marginal plant in dams and ponds, used as a bedding plant in tropical landscaping, or even used to hold creek banks — but it’s most widely grown for one thing: its fragrant leaves, prized across Asian cooking and traditional basket making.

A Fragrance Like No Other

Pandan has a distinctive, nutty botanical fragrance, most commonly used in rice dishes or tied into a bundle and cooked with food to infuse that unmistakable aroma. Beyond the kitchen, the leaves also work beautifully as a foliage element in flower arrangements — and, usefully, they have a genuine repellent effect on cockroaches. A small bundle placed in a drawer makes a surprisingly effective, completely natural deterrent.

Known by Many Names

Pandan is grown and loved right across Asia, and goes by a different name almost everywhere it’s found — ketaki in Bangladesh, pandan wangi in Indonesian, soon-mhway in Burmese, bai tooey in Thai, and rampe in Sri Lanka, among many other regional names.

Grows Like a Weed in the Wet Tropics

Here in the Wet Tropics, Pandanus amaryllifolius genuinely grows like a weed — it loves our high rainfall, high humidity and year-round warm temperatures. Unfortunately, most of our customers further south have to work at recreating that Wet Tropical microclimate in places like Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney.

Growing Pandan Outside the Tropics

One option is a hothouse, where you can fully control humidity, temperature and moisture. But the most popular approach for growing a few pandans for leaves is simply to keep them in pots — moved seasonally to suit the conditions they need:

• Summer: keep in a moist, part-sun spot in the garden, misting a few times daily if you can
• Winter: move to a warm, undercover area with bright light — a brightly lit bathroom is genuinely ideal

Winter watering needs real care. Water sparingly — once a week is usually enough — since overwatering in winter is a common way to rot the roots. Remember, pandan is a tropical plant that wants good humidity and warmth to grow actively, and it absolutely needs protection from temperatures below 10°C to survive. That said, plenty of people do successfully grow pandan in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide with the right care.

Watering and Feeding

Avoid heavily chlorinated water or salty bore water where possible — rainwater is best, since pandan doesn’t like chlorine or salt building up in the soil.

Pandan isn’t fussy about fertiliser type, but we do recommend feeding regularly through summer. Before your plant is sent to you, we dip the leaves and roots in a seaweed solution — this keeps it healthy for the journey and helps promote strong growth once it arrives.

Potting and Repotting

Try not to let your plant become too pot-bound — it’s better to pot up to the next size before it dries out too quickly between waterings. Be mindful of how many leaves you harvest at once, too: the plant needs its leaves for photosynthesis and ongoing growth. If you love using pandan generously in the kitchen (understandable, once you’ve had the fresh stuff), a value pack is a great option — three plants in a 200mm pot makes a stunning display and gives you plenty of leaf to harvest regularly. High-humidity-loving plants like this also tend to help create their own supportive microclimate when grown in a group.

The best time to repot is summer, using a high-quality, well-draining potting mix — a heavy mix inhibits root growth and increases the risk of rot over winter.

Wholesale Pandanus Amaryllifolius

Demand for Pandanus amaryllifolius is genuinely strong, but it’s difficult for nurseries outside a Wet Tropics climate to grow it quickly enough to offer at an affordable price point. We currently wholesale to a number of retail and online nurseries, and have recently expanded our own numbers. If you’re interested in purchasing wholesale, please get in touch — we can supply potted plants in tubes.