Welcome to our PLANTS. We hope to provide you with clear, simple, information about plants you may want to include in your garden. Where to plant them, what to avoid, what they need and how to grow more from the plants you have.

Invader Plants Guide
Visit our Invader Plants Guide lists to find out exactly what plants you need to remove from your garden.

Plants that are Toxic to Animlas
Visit our Are your plants toxic to animals?

Regional Plants Guide
Visit our Regional Plants Guide to find out exactly what climate type you live in, which plants are suited to that climate and whether your area suffer from frost or not. Our Regional Plants Guide covers South Africa and will be expanded to include the rest of Southern Africa in the future.

Useful Plants Guide
Our Useful Plants Guide explores the various uses of plants from culinary, medicinal and cosmetic viewpoints. We provide you with a herbal culinary chart and recipes that range from cheese cake to fish bakes. We expand on medicinal herbs used in tinctures and teas for various ailments, what herbs to use and how to use them. We explain what essential oils to use for various ailments and how to use them and what herbs to use for various cosmetic applications like soaps, face masks, bath bags and even candles. Make your own cosmetic products with herbs you've grown in your garden. We look at other Southern African plants that have healing or medicinal properties.

Annuals
Annuals are economical, fast-growing and long-flowering plants that provide quick transformations in the garden and excellent cut flowers for the house. They possess the ability to mature from seed in just two or three months, thus allowing us to fill gaps almost instantly, between shrubs and perennials, add brilliant, contrasting colours planted in flowerbeds, hanging baskets or containers. Their life cycle, from seed to seeding, last one growing season.

Bulbs
Bulbous plants are a bonus to any garden due to their versatility and adaptability to most habitats and soil-types. They need very little maintenance and can be grown in beds, borders, randomly in lawns, pots, window boxes or hanging baskets. Gardens can have all-year colour by careful selections of these magnificent plants..

Climbers
Climbers can be used effectively to provide windbreaks or privacy, conceal unwanted sights or merely to add an atmosphere of romance. With varying flower colours and foliage, one can choose plants to suit the home and garden’s colour scheme and theme. By considering different climbing methods, one can train Climbers into most shapes, fitting any space or, in the case of sprawling species, even using them as ground covers.

Conifers
Conifers - not just as Christmas trees. This range of mostly evergreen, cone-bearing plants is vast with shape-, size- and colour differences to suite any preferable taste and most climatic-, soil- or size- situations. Belonging to this range is the world’s tallest tree, the Sequoia, but also flat, ground-hugging plants and dwarf shrubs. There is an abundant list of Conifers to choose from and garden uses are never-ending. From container plants, shrubberies and rockeries to lawn specimens, hedges, windbreaks and shade trees. They add instant colour, texture and shape to your garden, are low-maintenance and most plants never need any pruning whatsoever. Plant them the same way as any shrub.

Ferns
Ferns need no introduction, even to those without gardens! They are diplomats of the plant-world, getting along with all other shade-loving plants. Any space will be enhanced by a potted or planted fern, whether en masse or alone, because of their delicate beauty. Adding to their popularity is their simple growing needs.

Ground Covers
Ground Covers form living carpets of lush foliage and flowers. They can be used to fill difficult-to-grow areas or as an alternative to lawns. Ground Covers spread fast and are ideal for doing away with the barren, clean look of a new garden or between shrubs and trees, they eliminate weed-growth and also solve problems of sloping sites - to name a few uses!

Hedges
Hedges are great, aesthetic features to gardens, providing not only decorative screens to different planting areas, but also hiding unwanted sights. More practically, Hedges provide privacy and shade, they screen noise and act as wind-shelters. They can create microclimates enabling you to plant otherwise unsuited plants. Hedges can suit your garden style by being informal with curving branches or clipped and formal.

Kitchen Gardens - Vegetables, Kitchen Gardens - Fruit and Kitchen Gardens - Herbs are most successfully incorporated into gardens nowadays and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t help ‘decorate’ your garden. Apart from their aesthetic appeal, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as going out to harvest your own produce for tonight’s cooking. For those with limited space, most plants and trees can be planted in containers, grown on balconies and verandahs. Kitchen Gardens - Herbs are very useful as an aesthetic contribution to the garden, adding flavour to cooking, for cosmetic- and medicinal purposes and even combating garden pests. Limited space should not deter one from planting herbs, seeing they can be planted in mixed borders or containers when need be. Separate herb gardens, formal or informal, are beautiful though and, where space permits, can be a great addition to any garden. Visit our Useful Plants Guide section for herbal remedies and recipes for cooking and cosmetics.

Lawns
Lawns are recreational areas and, if well-kept, can compliment your garden like nothing else. They have a cooling effect on hot days and make soft, informal seating on cool nights while picnicking. Your garden, like your home, needs decorative- and harmonizing carpeting, so choose a lawn grass suited to your area, provide in its requirements and keep it healthy.

Mushrooms
Because Mushrooms can not create their own food, not all botanists consider them a part of the plant kingdom. Either way, they are indispensable in the kitchen and prove a most brilliant compost medium too.

Orchids
It is very seldom that gardeners buy an orchid and stick to having only one. Orchids are magnificent plants that have the false reputation of being difficult to grow - especially in this country. But once you know how easy it could be, they will become a passion to most plant lovers.

Perennials
Perennials appear year after year, flowering during their specific seasons. Cultivation is quite simple provided they are planted in the right position with good drainage and get adequate water. Perennials may vary from those that have a lifespan of up to five years to those that may outlive the gardener, although these are rare. Seasonal planning will ensure permanent colour in the garden and it is therfore possible to ‘decorate’ your garden to a specific theme. Some Perennials are evergreen, others are herbaceous plants.

Potplants
Indoor decoration have adopted an inside-meet-outside concept that is made possible with indoor plants. Every room in your house can have a plant just through knowledge of its required amount of humidity, light and heat. A planted bottle garden (terrarium) is also very popular and needs, apart from a little water and liquid feed now and then, very little attention. Great Tip: use your banana peels to wipe pot plant's leaves with. By doing this you both clean and feed your plant!

Rock Garden Plants
Rock gardens, if properly constructed, provide a variety of suited planting conditions to great range op plants, like alpine, cacti and succulents. Rock gardens are great alternatives to problematic garden areas where the root systems of trees, for instance, make ordinary gardening impossible. Besides all other reasons for a rock garden, one could simply decide on one for its aesthetic appeal.

Shrubs
On their own, or as background to other plants, Shrubs are the indispensable furniture of the garden. They provide three-dimensional height, colour and texture and can be tough enough to provide you with a windbreak at the same time. Many Shrubs also grow well in containers and can be used successfully to create focal points anywhere in the garden. There are a vast selection of evergreen or deciduous species to choose from differing in size, shape, colour and textures.

Trees
Every garden needs a tree - at least one! Trees provide shade, privacy, shelter, noise- and wind protection, height, depth, oxygen and pleasure. They vary vastly in size, shape, foliage colour and hardiness. Therefore careful consideration of the garden, climate and type of tree is needed before purchasing/planting such a permanent feature.

Water Garden Plants
Ponds, water features, fountains - they all bring energy into the garden, whether cool and uplifting or calm and peaceful. Planted with oxygenating-, marginal and/or deep-water plants, or simply housing beautiful fish, water features are popular and with an unlimited range in shape, size and style, everyone can have one or more in their gardens.

Articles

Peerless Primulas

Wondrous Watsonias

Gardening with Gazanias

Taking Care of Your Plants

Vivacious Vincas

Sassy Salvias

The Polka Dot Plant

New Guinea Impatiens

Bewitching Begonias

Awesome Amaryllis ‘09

Perfect Petunias

Vibrant Violas

Frost Busters

Perfect Pansies

Totally Tulips

Exotic Torenia's for Summer Pizzazz

Impatiens - Patience rewarded

Deserving Dianthus

Poppy magic

Amazing Antirrhinums

Sensational Celosia

Ornamental grasses – add an extra dimension to the garden

The crowning glory of Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas)

Zingy Summer Zinnias

Bye-bye petunias, hullo impatiens

Alluring Ageratum

Kitchen garden with Di-Di Hoffman - All systems go!

The Living World Within Roses

Plant "Pazazz" with Petunias

Voila - Viola !!!

New Liliums from Hadeco

Ringing in the Bells

Using Winter Annuals Effectively

Guidelines to Planting Seedlings

Indigenous Inspirations

Perfect Primulas

Perennials for Shade

The Louisiana Iris

Februaury in the Kitchen Garden

Four Exotic Climbers

Start a Kitchen Garden

Container Recipes

Daylilies - The Perfect Perennial

New Rose - Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Garden Plants Perfect for Attracting Beneficial Insect Parasites and Predators

The Living World of Conifers

Drought Tolerant Summer Flowers

The Delight of Indigineous Daisies

Preparing Roses for Spring

Pruning is Rewarding

Spring Seed Sowing