CATEGORIES

The Gardener

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.

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3 mins  |
Feb 2017
New Year's Resolutions
The Gardener

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.

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2 mins  |
January 2017
Gardening For The Birds
The Gardener

Gardening For The Birds

Encouraging our feathered friends to the garden is popular these days.

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3 mins  |
May 2018
Spectacular Ninepin Heath For Fynbos Gardens
The Gardener

Spectacular Ninepin Heath For Fynbos Gardens

The ninepin heath was first described by the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus in 1771, in his tome Mantissa Plantarum.

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3 mins  |
May 2018
Breeding Koi
The Gardener

Breeding Koi

Great satisfaction can be found in rearing your own koi stock

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2 mins  |
May 2018
Living Wall Art
The Gardener

Living Wall Art

These innovative planters brighten up a dull wall.

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1 min  |
May 2018
Dwarf In Size Huge In Flower Power
The Gardener

Dwarf In Size Huge In Flower Power

These prize performers produce masses of flowers over a long period.

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4 mins  |
Aug 2017
Fine Planting Is Fynbos!
The Gardener

Fine Planting Is Fynbos!

Heritage plants like proteas, pincushions, blushing brides and cone bushes are common sights in garden centres nowadays, so there’s no excuse for not planting some of your own.

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3 mins  |
Aug 2017
Cascading Plants For Indoors
The Gardener

Cascading Plants For Indoors

Growing plants add a special dimension to the interiors of homes and offices. Usually those with plain green or sometimes variegated leaves are the easiest to grow in the low light and less humid conditions found indoors. We’ve selected three of the easiest and simplest indoor plants that perform admirably in a wide range of conditions. All they need is regular watering when the soil is dry to the touch and a splash of plant food every 4-6 weeks, and they’re styling.

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2 mins  |
May 2017
5 Easy-To-Grow Indoor Flowering Plants
The Gardener

5 Easy-To-Grow Indoor Flowering Plants

If you’re a gardener and a mother, chances are you’ll receive an indoor flowering plant for Mother’s Day. The timing is good, because it doesn’t take much effort to keep the flowers going through winter, and who knows what this winter will bring?

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4 mins  |
May 2017
Freesias And Tulips
The Gardener

Freesias And Tulips

Breeding experiments turned two bulbous plants from different continents into the late-winter-and spring-flowering darlings of gardeners all over the world.

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2 mins  |
May 2017
Striking Cobra Lily For Seasonal Colour
The Gardener

Striking Cobra Lily For Seasonal Colour

Although commonly called the cobra lily due to its hooded upper petal, Chasmanthe aethiopica is actually a member of the iris family (Iridaceae).

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3 mins  |
May 2017
How many koi can I keep in my pond?
The Gardener

How many koi can I keep in my pond?

To determine how many koi your pond can hold, you need to take into consideration a number of factors.

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2 mins  |
May 2017
Game Changer!
The Gardener

Game Changer!

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

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3 mins  |
October 2017
Turn To Green Manure
The Gardener

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.

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3 mins  |
October 2017
Beautiful, Useful, Round-leaf Kiaat
The Gardener

Beautiful, Useful, Round-leaf Kiaat

Beautiful, Useful, Round-leaf Kiaat

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2 mins  |
November 2017
3 Great Summer-Flowering Shrubs
The Gardener

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.

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2 mins  |
December 2018
Roses' Many Bedfellows
The Gardener

Roses' Many Bedfellows

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

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5 mins  |
December 2018
Caring For Air Plants
The Gardener

Caring For Air Plants

They cannot live on air alone!

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4 mins  |
December 2018
August In Your Garden
The Gardener

August In Your Garden

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

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7 mins  |
August 2019
No Frills
The Gardener

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.

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1 min  |
August 2019
Regenerate And Build
The Gardener

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!

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4 mins  |
August 2019
Moonlighting!
The Gardener

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…

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4 mins  |
August 2019
Get Ready For Summer
The Gardener

Get Ready For Summer

Good Idea in Plantation.

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2 mins  |
August 2019
3 Single-Stemmed Aloes
The Gardener

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.

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1 min  |
June 2019
Beautiful Sugarbushes For The Fynbos Garden
The Gardener

Beautiful Sugarbushes For The Fynbos Garden

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

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3 mins  |
June 2019
Winter And Spring In The Bonsai Garden
The Gardener

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.

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3 mins  |
June 2019
Design Down Under
The Gardener

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.

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6 mins  |
June 2019
Plan For A Spring Spectacular
The Gardener

Plan For A Spring Spectacular

Start planning now for spring to make sure it’s filled with seasonal beauty.

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3 mins  |
March 2019
In The Pink
The Gardener

In The Pink

Thank goodness it’s autumn! Now that our summers have become so hot, autumn is a welcome season, bringing with it relief for the roses and bigger, deeper-coloured blooms.

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2 mins  |
March 2019