CATEGORIES

Drought-Proof Dollar Plants

Indigenous and water-wise, crassulas can be jewels in a dry garden.

Black Diamonds

As a result of the extremely dry conditions over the last few years, everybody is struggling to find plants that will survive the harsh water restrictions.

Blushing Beauties

Harness the power of pink for your summer garden.

3 Great Summer-Flowering Shrubs

Summer gardens throughout most of the country are luxuriant with trees and shrubs in full growth. Many produce an abundance of blooms during the heart of the growing season, adding to the allure of these warm months. The flowers are offset by a background of greenery that is often in stark contrast to winter and spring, when so many blooms appear before the new spring leaves. Shrubs perform many important functions in the garden, including creating a permanent foundation to give the landscape shape and form. Flowering shrubs add a little extra to the entire garden when they’re in full bloom.

Roses' Many Bedfellows

Companion plants for roses need to be carefully picked for success.

Caring For Air Plants

They cannot live on air alone!

August In Your Garden

This quick checklist is to remind you what to do in your garden in August.

No Frills

A terracotta pot with some salvias that had been in there for two years needed much attention. If the plants could have issued an instruction it would have been, ‘Please free me from this pot!’ So, armed with a few plants, I set to giving this gorgeous pot a new look, and at the same time transplanted the salvias into the garden where I am sure they will be much happier.

Regenerate And Build

Plant in pots near kitchenGet some basil seed to plant with these – great for pizza nights this summerQuick and easy – great taste for saladsDon’t plant these 2 together!Mom’s quick pickles for these!Use these for the carrot mousse recipe – the kids love it!

Moonlighting!

By day silvery leaves stand out gently between all the different shades of green. But when illuminated by only the light of the moon, they create a magical lustre…

Get Ready For Summer

Good Idea in Plantation.

New Trends for Shade

Stumperies make a comeback

Heaven Scent Indigenous Plants

I magine sitting in your favourite spot in the garden. Now add the sweet scent of wild jasmine wafting on the breeze, and the nutmeggy, spicy scent of Cape may that you’ve just brushed past. In this way, clever placement of scented and aromatic plants can bring enchantment to your garden. 

Up Close And Personal With The Chelsea Flower Show

Inspiration from the keynote gardens.

Indigenous Hedges And Screens: Keeping It Green

Many gardeners are hesitant about hedges and unsure about screens. A hedge, they reason, will take a long time to grow and need a lot of maintenance, but that’s not necessarily so.

The Family Herb Garden Herbs To Keep Dad Happy And Healthy

Herbs can easily become part of our daily lives because they have so many different uses.

Getting To Grips With Paving

Paving an area can transform it, and it’s quite simple to do yourself. Here are some points to keep in mind to make your paving job perfect.

Patterns In Pavers

Laying pavers seems so easy and fun that anyone could do it.

Restios Have Soul And Style

For graceful movement in the wind, turn to the Cape reed family.

Great Expectations

Pruning various roses for maximum yield of blooms.

Orchids In The Home

Don’t be intimidated by these exotic beauties.

A Family Affair

From mother to daughter. This is a delightful story of how a talented young woman has successfully built on the foundations of a gracious garden laid down by her equally gifted mother.

New Year's Resolutions

GET THE LOOK Come hither: There’s nothing more alluring than when a garden beckons from behind a gate, especially if the gateway is framed with roses. The terra cotta pot on the one side of this entrance contains ‘Garden and Home’ as the main feature, with ‘Granny’s Delight’ spilling over the edge and blue lobelia tucked in for extra colour. Other roses that would work just as well are ‘Avril Elizabeth’, ‘Clocolan’, ‘Candice’, ‘Crimson Velvet Dress’, ‘Remember Me’, ‘Happy Birthday’, ‘Sunny Ayoba’, ‘Easy Does It’ and ‘Perfumery’. On the other side of the entrance, ‘Deloitte and Touche’ peeps shyly around the corner, while standard ‘Iceberg’ roses, with their abundance of blooms, entice one into the main garden and provide a dazzling contrast to the cerise bougainvillea and purple Solanum rantonnetii. Instead of ‘Iceberg’ try ‘French Panarosa’ or ‘Lioness GrandiRosa’. If you are wanting to kick-start the new year with a special garden project, perhaps this will provide the inspiration.

Game Changer!

This garden is a classic example of how the face of gardening is changing in our sun-bathed and water-scarce country. 

Turn To Green Manure

Manure is usually something that we think of as smelly, albeit useful for our garden, but difficult to obtain from a reliable source, especially if you live in the big city.

Beautiful, Useful, Round-leaf Kiaat

Beautiful, Useful, Round-leaf Kiaat

3 Single-Stemmed Aloes

Aloes dominate the winter landscapes in many parts of our beautiful country, none more so than the different single-stemmed aloes that stand tall and statuesque in what is often an otherwise barren countryside. They are spectacular when in bloom and remain prominent feature plants throughout the year. Their distinctive shape and form make them important components in indigenous gardens and succulent and water-wise landscapes, in fact almost anywhere. They all attract a wide array of birds to their nectar-rich flowers.

Beautiful Sugarbushes For The Fynbos Garden

The sugarbush or suikerbos is one of South Africa’s iconic and most familiar proteas.

Winter And Spring In The Bonsai Garden

It is easy to presume that winter in the bonsai garden is a time of rest and relaxation.

Design Down Under

The Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show sits on the global stage as an important event on the gardening calendar, so we went along to see what it was all about.