Easy-care

As winter wanes and our thoughts turn to spring and puddles of warming golden sunshine, a coastal garden pulls on its itsy bitsy teeny weenie orange-pink-yellow polka dot bikini! Against a lapis lazuli sky, the colours are clear and oh so cheerful!

The client’s brief to landscaper Jenny Dean was simple: change a tiny corner of their tiny Hillcrest estate garden to resemble a snapshot of their Namibian break  – red-tinged boulders to resemble a rock wall, gravel to echo stony ground, and a smattering of succulents and grasses in between.

Do you have a slope or bank ready to be dressed more creatively than the default retaining wall blocks or mown lawn? An eye-catching cocktail dress rather than a comfortable pair of jeans; a brightly coloured pashmina to replace a worn monotone windbreaker? Aside from adding a beautiful feature, this style detail/ element increases the sustainability of the garden too, for it saves on lawnmower fuel, provides level planting pockets for better water penetration, and provides h

Thriving verge designs translate well into resilient home gardens. Successfully planted verges, for example, offer up a list of resilient species for our gardens as roadside plants battle challenging conditions to survive

Tough, evergreen hedges and screens, either formally clipped or allowed to take on a looser form, are critical components to help deflect and filter the famous Cape winds.

Many perennials and bulbs ‘cover’ the ground effectively and are often included in this plant category, but, for this article, we focus...

Spring is the optimal time to establish plants in the summer rainfall regions; we’re a month in, so let’s get cracking.   We’ll begin...

“People will stare. Make it worth their while”, proclaimed award-winning marketing expert, Sally Hogshead, to advertise a famous...

Mention the word succulent, and many people envision a desert -like design.  Not so! The garden pictured here is alight with color year roun

Senecio barbertonicus creates height at the top of the bank.  A small to medium size shrub with a neatly rounded shape it has bright green n

Succulents jostle with each other in this vibrant show softened by the inclusion of grasses. The drooping fronds of grasses and the grasslan