subject: Increase Your Parklands Real Estate Price With The Sa Garden Colour Guide! [print this page] First of the list are the indigenous aloes which bring a glow of blazing colour into the garden with their spires of red and orange flowers. Their bold foliage as well as unusual shapes also add fascination and accent to the garden.
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The majority of Aloe varieties are indigenous to Africa, and a sizable amount are indigenous to South Africa. They vary from the 6m tall tree aloe (Aloe arborescens) to low growing hybrids like the new Aloe Pink Blush' which has textured, dark green and pale green leaves with raised pink ridges and orange flowers. Whereas the majority of aloes produce upright spires of tubular flowers, some possess softer heads of flowers (A. striata) and some produce pendulous flower heads (A. variegata and A. distans).
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Aloes also look lovely in the Afro-Japanese garden or the desert garden. The round shrubby aloes for instance the krantz aloe and Basuto kraal aloe are beautiful within a tropical or Mediterranean-style garden. Try planting aloes the length of the pavement side of the boundary wall -- they require hardly any maintenance or water and their bold shapes will show up to perfection beside a simple wall. All aloes make great rockery plants - place the stem aloes at the top of your rockery to display their bold structure.
Brilliant colour
Bedding plants will provide colour for the duration of the winter season. Remember to plant tall-growing flowers at the rear of the bed, and low-growing ones at the frontage.
In a sunny border, try a yellow, pasty and sapphire colour system with marigolds, blue petunias and white pansies.
Or fly the flag with black pansies, red snapdragons, blue lobelia, and just a contact of white and yellow!
The trailing growth habits of bacopa, lobelias, alyssum and petunias render them fine plants for hanging baskets. Petunias interplanted along with pansies in a complementary colours and with a stroke of white alyssum make a lovely container planting. The early on spring osteospermum are also in flower. Look out for the yellow, white and lilac species.
For sunny parts in the lawn and rockery ornate kale, kalanchoe and indigenous members of the daisy species will present large number days of dazzling colour. The African daisy (Namaqualand daisy), hybrid gazanias and arctotis are resilient and drought-resilient.
Vegetation for colour
There are a large number of vibrantly coloured wintry weather flowering undergrowth that may be sowed in corners of the backyard that call for cheering up. If you have a shaded lawn, take into account the collection of home-grown plectranthus.
The decorative pink-spur plectranthus (Plectranthus fruticosus) will reach 2m in height. Look out for the various hybrids in colors of pale purple, cerulean as well as pink.
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When you are looking for an unique blue spur flowers, look out out for the Zulu spur flower (Plectranthus zuluensis) which blossoms along October to June then a peak in April. Pretty cultivars of this ones consist of Oribi Gorge' with light purple-blue blooms, Sky', a low-growing (1m) shrub with intensely purple-blue blossoms, and Umgai', a taller (2m) shrub with dark purple-blue blossoms.
The most thrilling of the plectranthus varieties is Mona Lavender', a mixture bred at Kirstenbosch in the late 1990s. Mona Lavender possesses intensely emerald, shiny leaves with dark purple undersides with sprays of lilac blossoms splashed with purple markings. Best for boundaries or in containers at entrances, on verandas or as a upper circle element plant.
It is in addition a good time to replace aged wooded lavenders and rosemary with the newest variety of young better-shaped greenery. Both are ideal for near to the ground hedges that segregate up the garden into romantic quarters.
As a final point, it is a excellent time period for brightening up the backyard with flowering pelargoniums. "No other South African set of vegetation has been welcomed, or contributed more to the business of gardening than the pelargonium, better branded as geranium," states native garden journalist, Joan Wright. Plant the ivy pelargonium ones on slopes and use zonal pelargoniums for affect colours around decks and swimming pools.
