Growing the slope...

Editor Tanya Visser, describes how she tamed the steepest of several slopes in her beautiful garden.

Building a house and garden on one of the renowned ‘Thousand Hills’ of KwaZulu-Natal was no walk in the park! I had big dreams and firm plans about a garden ‘on the level’ with an expansive lawn bordered by wide, mixed beds filled with flowering plants despite the natural topography of the land. It turned out this dream was quite a challenge and resulted in a lot of earthmoving.

I suppose I could have just settled for the usual cement retaining blocks often used to retain banks, but my budget was tight, and I wanted a more natural look with bold rocks and dry stone retaining walls. My dad trained as a stone mason and some of the stones used in my wall were the original stones the two of us collected when they were blasting for the new N2 highway to Scottburgh. I moved around with these stones until I had my own property.

A set of curved sandstone steps was also one of my extravagances I was definitely going to have.

Vegetating the slope 

The first objective was to plant strong focal plants like bold aloe species and lots of succulents to stand out as contrasting plants, to bind the soil, and also to soften the rock edges with their lush and spreading growth habits. As new aloe hybrids became available and I fell in love with their strong clumpforming and free-flowering habits, I added swathes of them.