Feed and mow

If you’ve awakened your lawn by giving it its first spring feed and a nourishing blanket of lawn dressing last month, chances are that it will already be looking quite good.

Strawberry harvest

PRESERVING

Sweet broom and daisies

Create light and happiness after a dark and cold winter with spring bloomers that aren’t afraid to flower their hearts out.

Darling Dianthus

Dianthuses provide one of the most spectacular year-round colour displays in your garden. In their traditional colours of pink, purple, red, white, and even bi-coloured, these beautiful little flowers are as striking as they are generous.

ALL-IN-ONE GARDENING

Summer is on its way, which means that we can start living and entertaining outdoors again. That means beautifying the garden where we will appreciate it most.

Designer garden tap

Update your garden tap with a neat wooden tap cover that turns a necessity into a feature.

Shut up!

I might have some sympathy for that angry old man wearing a black fedora who shouted ‘shut up’, although it might be a better idea if in future he zips his lips and listens to others for a change

Thanks to indigenous edibles

When it comes to indigenous edibles, a few spring to mind, especially the fruit of the marula tree that was so memorable in Jamie Uys’s iconic film Beautiful People (1974).

Think Spring!

When spring arrives, so should masses of flowers in the garden. These stunning plants are all in flower now and ready to delight in your spring garden.

Laid-back living

It's hard to believe that this slice of tropical splendour is in frosty Gauteng, but a clever design combined with judicious plant choices has given hot results.

Strings

8 string succulents for indoor gardens

‘Setsugekka' is smart!

Amongst the many Camellia sasanqua hybrids, the extremely gracious ‘Setsugekka’ is just itching to flower spectacularly for you...

MOSS POLES

Climbing indoor plants like philodendrons, pothos (Epipremnum aureum) and monsteras need a support structure to train upwards, like any other climber. A great option for these houseplants is a moss pole.

Wire techniques

Styling bonsai using wire is a fairly modern technique that was developed in Japan at some point during the 1800s. As with most bonsai techniques, the basic principle is fairly simple but the execution can at times be quite challenging.

Food and shelter for wildlife

Scattering wild grass seeds around your garden will help to feed the birds during the hungry months.

Romance made MODERN

This beautiful, eclectic garden in Constantia, Cape Town, was completed just days before the Covid lockdown began in 2020. The garden is a feather in the cap of KwaZulu-Natal-based husband and wife team John and Tanya Keating of Tandi Landscapes, as this was the fourth garden they were invited to design for their clients.

Forever yours…

You plant or sow them once, enjoy the reason why you did it, and then, totally unchoreographed and spontaneously, they turn up again when you least expect it. These are the self-seeding and naturalising plants that stay with you…

Prune peaches and plums

Fruit trees like peaches and plums need pruning when they become dormant as it will ensure the production of top-quality fruit in summer. If you’ve planted young fruit trees within the past two years and are now wondering how to train them properly, follow these steps:

Hanging tough!

Hanging baskets are great focal points as well as a clever way to use empty vertical space, but they can be hard to maintain as they dry out so fast.

Dress up a tree

Dressing up a beautiful shade tree with smart plants is another form of vertical gardening.

DRAINAGE DO OR DIE

We have a saying in our office, “You can plant in just abut anything as long as it has drainage.” The reason why drainage is important is that most plants don’t like their roots to sit in water, and without drainage, water build-up in containers is likely.

BLUSHING BRIDE

Serruria florida, also known as the pride of Franschhoek, is a delicate member of the fynbos family that has become critically endangered in the wild due to alien invasive species and too-frequent fires not giving the veld plants enough chance to mature and to set seed to build up a seedbank, although fire is ironically needed to aid the seed germination.

Cups of Gold Stoic and Tenacious!

If you can get your hands on some seed packets of the California poppy and show the picture of the golden, cup-shaped flowers on them to a kid, chances are great that the answer would be a positive ‘yes!’, and in two ticks you will have happy and excited company in the garden to help you to sow the seed.

Pure and Simple Apple Cider

An apple tree in a garden is one of the delights of growing your own food. There may come a time, though, when there are too many apples for one family and the neighbours to eat, and they need to be preserved to use through winter. By the end of May, all the apples on a tree should be harvested before the colder weather comes along.

Variegation Explained

Any plant lovers who have spent time on the internet recently will have come across swathes of variegated plants on their social media feeds. Whether it’s the incredibly popular variegated Monstera, the collectable cultivars of the Epipremnum aureum species, or even outdoor ornamental foliage plants, variegation is taking centre stage this year.

Afro Zen

Fusing the mediative Zen school with the vibrant pulse of Africa.

Get More Kalanchoes

Many (or most) succulents can be swiftly propagated via stem cuttings, including all the prettiest kalanchoes, so in just a few steps you can have a lot of new plants for free. Regularly taking cuttings is also a form of pruning that curbs the natural etiolated growth they tend to produce after a few growth seasons.

A Sunsational Garden

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

A New Style of Border

Over the years, the very ornamental herbaceous border drifted away from the functional cottage-garden-style borders, where edibles like fruit, herbs and vegetables were mixed with garden flowers in no particular order. It became instead a symbol of prestige in English country gardens, and was designed and planted up by master gardeners flaunting their ultimate gardening skill in creating masterpieces of shapes, colours and textures on a large scale.

6 Flowering Low Hedges

Low hedges, where a number of the same plants are used repeatedly in a row to form a pattern or barrier are strong design elements, but do they have to be the traditional and formally clipped green box or golden duranta hedges? The answer is no!