The Gardener Magazine

There is abundance all around us. Just yesterday someone showed me a video clip of Theewaterskloof Dam, Cape Town’s largest reservoir, overflowing for the first time in a decade. At the end of 2017 the dam was just 12.7% full, and now it has register

GARDENA is known for its innovative products, and this one is no different. The AquaBloom Irrigation Set is a solar-powered automatic irrigation system for up to 20 plants. The AquaBloom runs off solar energy and doesn’t even need to be connected to

Castle Ridge, a gracious home that was built in the early 1920’s, is perched on the highest point of Westcliff’s ridge in Johannesburg, Gauteng. Its current owners, a young family, embarked on an extensive restoration of the entire property approxima

The Cape fuchsia is a fast-growing, multi-branching plant with soft, oval, dark green leaves and weeping tube-like flowers that are loved by sugarbirds and sunbirds. In nature it grows naturally near water in sun to light shade. ‘Candydrops’ is a ran

Fuchsias, hailing from Southern and Central America, have taken the plant world by storm. There are thousands of varieties available, as well as societies, clubs and annual shows dedicated purely to them. There are basically two growth types of fuchs

Most pet owners are aware of the importance of pet-safe gardening – avoiding toxic plants, fencing off no-go areas and double-checking the label on any chemical products used in the garden. However, few gardeners consider allocating a part of their g

With indoor plants all the rage these days, a great gift idea is a beautiful indoor plant and a graceful pot cover that complements it. A very useful advantage of pot covers is that you don’t need many – you can easily and quickly slip one plant out

Baby vegetables are not just trendy from a gourmet point of view. For gardeners in a hurry or who have limited space, baby veggies are quicker to harvest and can be grown closer together. Their flavour, of course, is the clincher, being sweeter or mi

Dierama pendulum, commonly known as fairy bell, wandflower and angel’s fishing rod, is endemic to the Eastern Cape and is loved for its slender, wand-like stems with pendulous, pink belllike flowers. The leaves of this evergreen perennial that grows

• Herbs need sunshine, but in midsummer they will do better with morning sun and afternoon shade, especially basil.• Use good-quality potting soil and mix in a controlled-release fertiliser.• Densely planted mixed containers may need daily watering i

Daylilies are extremely prolific, even though the individual flowers only last for 24 hours. Members of the genus Hemerocallis (daylily) have been hybridised extensively, and those that are available for us to plant today are mostly evergreen and eas

Green beans are one of summer’s most prolific veggies, but if you find that they are not performing well, it could be that they are planted too close to a member of the onion family. They also don’t like being planted with dill, fennel or garlic, eve

Although some species of Ornithogalum are spring-flowering, the giant chincherinchee flowers much later (January to April), producing smooth stems up to 1.5m tall and topped with umbels of white star-shaped flowers with pronounced black ovaries at th

If bold, bright and beautiful is what you are after, plant this month’s bedding bestie: Celosia (commonly known as cock’s comb). Available in a colour feast of red, orange, yellow, hot pink, rose, mahogany and magenta, celosias are exceptionally hard

Delphiniums grow very tall and become top-heavy when in bloom. Because the flower stems are hollow and brittle, they tend to topple over in the slightest breeze. Prevent damage to your prized blooms by staking the stems of these plants in mid-summer.

What started out as a humble greenhouse for inherited cymbidium orchids has been transformed into a little tropical oasis of green leaves. Taking on its own personality, it has changed the way Izolda thinks about nature. Izolda seldom returns from a

Gasterias, also known as forest oxtongues, are aloe lookalikes and are mostly indigenous to the warmer areas of South Africa. More specifically, they can be found in the Eastern Cape, where they grow in dry thickets or cling precariously to a rock fa

There are three main types of corn that are grown for eating, as well as one that is used as an ornamental corn: • Sweetcorn – best harvested when young and used as fresh as possible.• Flour corn – the varieties that have a high starch content, usual

Bulbs are mysterious storage organs that can be influenced by the seasons and water to produce the most weird and wonderful blooms, and one such summer bulb must be the white spider lily (Hymenocallis). The flowers, borne on stout 60cm stems and appe

The rose of the month is the miniature climbing rose ‘Red Midinette’, which produces clusters of bright red miniature blooms against glossy green leaves. Don’t be misled by the miniature classification; this feisty little climber spreads up to 3m, an

Combat broadleaf lawn weeds either by manual removal or by spot treating with a selective herbicide. In extreme cases, it might be necessary to do a blanket application over the whole lawn. This should be done twice. The first application will kill o

✓ Buy amaryllis bulbs and keep them in the veggie drawer of your fridge until exactly six weeks before 25 December (13 November), when you should plant them to have a home full of flowering amaryllis exactly on Christmas Day. ✓ Dig compost and boneme

Sometimes it’s hard to find space to best display small potted plants. This fairly easy DIY allows you to do just that, displaying them on a wall wherever it suits you. 3 x 22mm x 144mm x 1.8m PAR Pine cut to: 1 x 1.4m x 144mm x 22mm (upright) 4 x 18