Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i The Gardener Magazine

We are entering one of the busiest garden months in the calendar, a month that really gets my juices flowing! Now that temperatures have cooled down we need to prepare now for everything that we want to happen in spring. An added bonus is that it’s really much more comfortable to garden now that it’s cooler! Let’s start off with seeds. This time of the year is when it all happens: from getting in your Namaqualand daisies and Virginia stocks to sowing mixed seed packs for shady or sunny spots. Seeds offer so much reward for such a small investment, especially when compared to buying seedlings – seeds are streaks ahead when it comes to value for money. And if you’re willing to put in a little effort the reward…

What a fun challenge this small urban garden was. A beautifully renovated old Durban home needed a garden to match its beauty, but the challenge was that we were extremely limited for space. Our wonderful clients have extremely highly pressured jobs, which doesn’t allow them much time to garden, so the garden needed to provide a sanctuary to come home to after a long day at work, but remain fairly low maintenance. We worked cleverly with the space to create different rooms, to add interest and entice you around the garden. As you arrive, two beautiful, classical urn water features greet you, providing a cool and calming sound. The use of gravel and formal hedging allowed us to bring in green elements, yet still have space to move around. From…

Dianthus needs to be added to the list of garden toughies that are water-wise, don’t mind neglect and outlast most other garden annuals. Planted now, dianthus will flower through winter into spring and summer, and only by next autumn will plants be well and truly exhausted. The secret of longevity is full sun and soil that drains well, which means they are good for coastal gardens. In gardens with heavy soil and a bit too much shade, dianthus can be grown as a long-lasting container plant in an area with lots of sun. Like petunias, dianthus should not be overwatered as they rot when it is wet and hot. They perform best in cooler, drier weather. Keeping plants neat is also easy. Wait until the flush is almost over and…

Cocktails sound sophisticated, glamorous and just a little bit decadent. Add herbs to the mix, a dash of juiced vegetables or fruit, remove the sugary tonics, and you have a wellness cocktail. Adding health without losing the kick – that’s the new trend in wellness, and what better way to incorporate herbs into your diet! Did you know that the Egyptians infused wine with herbal medicines as early as 3150 BC? And in the middle ages monks perfected the making of tinctures, using alcohol to extract and preserve the medicinal properties of herb leaves and flowers. Tinctures are still used today as tonics and for treating various ailments. As we all know, the herbal approach to life is all about moderation. Even when dosing with herbs, less is more. If…

WHAT YOU NEED Scrap Masonite, MDF, plywood or cardboard for the circle and the bird house White paint for the bird house Leaves, bark and sticks Floral foam Wire A selection of fresh flowers Glue gun and glue sticks Ribbon Small white chocolate eggs WHAT YOU DO…

1 Year-round interest with 'Zambezi' New hybrids of the trusty indigenous agapanthus appear often, and all of them are plant-worthy in a waterwise garden. Agapanthus ‘Zambezi’, however, stands out above the rest with its broad, strappy, leatherlike leaves that are dark green streaked with a creamy-yellow variegation and framed by a broad golden-yellow margin. This variegation means year-round colour. ‘Zambezi’ grows to approximately 40cm in height and produces tall, strong flower spikes above the foliage with open-faced violet flowers that appear through the summer months, generally from December to March. It is evergreen and will handle light frost. Plant it in full sun or semi-shade in well-drained soil. Great for pots too! 2 April is sowing month You need to shop for: Seasonal, fresh seed (the seed packets on the…

BEST DAYS FOR APRIL…

Dipladenia ‘Diamantina Opale’ Slow-growing climbers that are best grown up a small trellis or some other means of support, these plants have lush green leaves with a waxy sheen with odd tendrils appearing amongst them. There are two different colour forms in this group: ‘Citrine’ is a unique clear yellow shade and ‘Grenat’ is a rich burgundy. Both of these stand out amongst the other lower-growing dipladenias and should be given suitable growing conditions to emphasise their larger stature. Light pruning can be undertaken in mid-spring when new growth commences and winter is over. Dipladenia ‘Diamantina Tourmaline’ The ‘Tourmaline’ range is actually just a single rose-pink variety. The extremely compact and bushy plants produce an abundance of star-shaped flowers all through the spring, summer and autumn period. It remains shrubby…

6 INDIGENOUS BULBS TO PLANT THIS AUTUMN A colourful, fragrant spring garden is incomplete without bulbs. Whether in pots or flowerbeds, indoors or outdoors, bulbs are guaranteed to add a wow factor wherever they bloom. However, they do require a little patience. A beautiful blooming spring garden full of bulbs requires planting in autumn, and therefore some planning ahead. In your process of planning, the first question when faced with the enormous variety of bulbs available is, “What on earth do I plant?” For those with a penchant for indigenous gardens there are six stunning bulbs available now to fulfil any vivid garden desire. Babiana This sizeable genus of about 80 individual species hails largely from the West Coast of South Africa. The genus name stems from the primates that…

There is an art to placing benches in the garden. A bench at the end of a series of rose-covered arches makes it a focal point, and a rose-covered gazebo becomes an intimate space when a bench is added. Use your bench as an invitation, to draw people through the rose garden so they can stop and enjoy the perfume on the way. To achieve the effect you want, the rose with the right growth habit needs to be used for the pergola, gazebo or archway. Large gazebos require a strong but not rampant-growing rose that grows up to 3m and flowers repeatedly, so that the gazebo becomes a feature. A popular gazebo rose is ‘Eden Rose’, which has very large, soft pink flowers and disease-resistant glossy green leaves. It…

Some gardeners prefer to buy their bedding plants as seedlings in punnets at the nursery, rather than sowing flowering annuals themselves. There is nothing wrong with this, but there are cheaper ways to garden. One small packet of flower seed costs between R18 and R24, and depending on the type of seed (big or very small) you can get up to 600 seeds per packet, as with Namaqualand daisies. Secondly, you will miss out on a wide variety of plants. Many winter- and spring-flowering annuals can only be sown directly as they do not tolerate either shelf life in a tray or transplanting all that well. Pretty flower faces like forget-me-nots, Virginia stocks, African daisies, bokbaaivygies, Shirley poppies, candytuft, California poppies, cornflowers, love-in-a-mist, nemesias, linarias and godetias (satin flowers) are…

WHAT YOU NEED An old chandelier Small terracotta pots (the same number as there are arms on the chandelier, and the right size to fit the chandelier) 1m lightweight chain Nuts and fender washers to fit the lamp holder tubes (or quickset epoxy) Tools Spanner, screwdriver, wire snips or pliers WHAT YOU DO…

Tired of messy hosepipes? Tuck your hosepipes against the wall with a Gardena Wall-Mounted Hose Box. This easy-to-install product automatically rewinds the hose and comes with a hose guide and anti-drip device. Once installed, using the included wall bracket and assembly kit, it can swivel up to 180° and has integrated frost protection. Available with 30m or 35m hose capacities. www.gardena.co.za Wiz of a worm farm Wizzard Worms has brought out a new wormery especially designed for a single person. The Wiz Worm Farm will produce about a ½ litre of worm wee per week and vermicompost every three months. It is the perfect size for a person with a balcony, small area, school projects or someone who wants to experiment with a new worm farm at a reasonable price.…

I am not keen on any form of gambling – I don’t even take out a raffle ticket or play the tombola at church fetes, since I have never won anything. I don’t regard the ‘winning’ of five dahlia bulbs one year after my business card was drawn at a gardening trade day as a win per sae. I suspect that it was rigged, and I actually forgot the bulbs in a plastic bag in the car’s boot and missed their planting season altogether! A gambling-loving friend once invited me on a weekend visit to a casino in Swaziland. In those days everything that had something to do with sin was banned in South Africa, so in my youthful innocence I regarded our trip as a huge cloak-and-dagger adventure. After…

For much of the last century pride of Indias were planted extensively all around South Africa, used as garden shrubs and trained as single-stemmed standards, and also popular as street trees in many of the new towns associated with the mining boom. Today they have seemingly disappeared from the scene. That is, until recently. A new generation of hybrids have been introduced from America to rekindle interest in these free-flowering plants. Lagerstroemia indica is found growing naturally in Asia and is known by many common names such as pride of India, crape myrtle or crepe flower. The flowers are born in summer and early autumn in terminal clusters on stout branches or stems. Each individual petal is soft and papery looking, giving rise to the appropriate common names. The trees…

• Reduce watering in summer-rainfall areas to once a week. In warm subtropical and coastal areas water more frequently because the roses are entering their prime blooming time. In winter-rainfall areas water once a week in the absence of rainfall. • Heavier dew or rainfall requires more vigilant spraying for black spot, in order to keep retain the leaves and ensure flowering. Spray every two weeks with Chronos or Rose Protector. Adding Ludwig’s Insect Spray will control any insect infestation. • If the roses have lost their leaves from black spot you can stop spraying and let the roses go dormant, or you can get them back into shape. This involves pinching out growing tips and watering once a week so that they develop new leaves and will flower again…

We grabbed a wide bowl, some potting soil, a few punnets of late summer annuals in full bloom, and textured foliage plants to capture the last pleasures of summer. We wanted to create an instant garden in a container. Instant gratification is part of modern-day life, and it is luckily always possible to achieve with plants if you are prepared to play around, enjoy it for a while and then let it go… The plants in our pot garden 1 Callistephus chinensis ‘Matsumoto Pink’ is a popular cut flower novelty aster of Japanese origin, and has bright, cheery, yellow-eyed spray-type flowers on long stems (60cm). These asters, which don’t like overwatering, will flower in the garden from spring to autumn. 2 Jacobaea maritima ‘Dusty Miller’ is perhaps better known as…

Over the last 12 000 years the practice of agriculture has been honed, revised and tweaked to suit a plethora of ecosystems, climates and conditions. With the advent of the 21st century, agricultural science has grown at an expansive rate, opening up a wealth of new knowledge for farmers and gardeners. An example of this can be found in the ‘James Leslie’ approach to soil maintenance. By shifting the focus from the crop to the soil itself, farmers have been growing healthier food and raking in higher yields. This also leads to less expensive chemical use, crops with a higher natural resistance against disease and less work on cleaner soil. As gardeners, we can learn a lot from these farmers when it comes to our own practices, or more specifically,…

If you page through a beautiful coffee table book on bonsai, or look at some photos of bonsai on the internet, it is easy to become mislead. You’ll see stunning miniature trees in beautiful pots in a well-tended display area, and it’s easy to presume that bonsai must be expensive and difficult. It’s true that well-established bonsais in lovely pots are expensive, but it is important to realise that these trees are the very best of the best. The reality is that bonsai is not an expensive process. Bonsai are not grown in fancy pots, but are only placed in fancy pots when they have reached a certain stage of maturity. Bonsai are grown in all sorts of containers, from plastic nursery bags to old coffee tins, although many peoples’…

GAUTENG Saturday 13 – Sunday 14 April • Johannesburg Succulent Society Autumn Show Come and feast your eyes on a display of succulents from some of the best collections in South Africa. A huge selection of plants will be on sale by local enthusiasts. Venue: Floreum Hall, Johannesburg Botanical Gardens, Emmarentia Entrance: Free, from 09:00 Enquiries: jhbss.info@gmail.com, rauschanthony@gmail.com WESTERN CAPE Saturday 13 April • TOKARA Autumn Open Garden and Annual Rare Plant Sale Experience TOKARA in all its autumn splendour when this acclaimed Stellenbosch family wine and olive estate opens its extensive farm garden to the public. Meander through tranquil walks dotted with sculptures by local artists while taking in the magnificent vistas over the large garden dam. The dedicated indigenous garden, textures in the cork oak forest and the…