Temperatures are rising and South Africa is in bloom. Now is the time to fill your home and garden with colourful plants. Here’s how...
Decorate your patio with pots of daffodils, plant up shady containers with spring-flowering azaleas or plan for the future with a climbing wisteria that will drape purple blooms over walls and pergolas.
Cherry, peach, pear and apple trees will be covered in blossom and borders of azaleas are in full bloom. Plan a spring corner by planting a blossom tree underplanted with azaleas. If you need sunset shades, consider the glorious azalea mollis and Ghent azalea hybrids which produce clusters of white, yellow, pink and burnt orange flowers.
Borders of colour
Spring gardens wouldn’t be complete without charming pansies and their smaller relatives, violas. Use them to edge shady paths, carpet beds and brighten containers, window boxes and hanging baskets.
Another winner in spring is the bush lily (Clivia miniata) which offers a swathe of orange and yellow. Like the clivia, the dusky-pink forest lily (Veltheimia bracteata) thrives in shady parts of the garden.
For brilliance of colour, look out for the “cat’s tail” bulbinellas whose globular yellow heads on tall stems make a dramatic statement among more conventional spring plantings. Gazanias, arctotis and osteospermum thrive in the warm spring weather.
If yours is a windy garden, low-growing plants are the answer. The spring-flowering ice plants or vygies (lampranthus, drosanthemum), with their glistening pink and purple, orange and red flowers, are eye-catching planted on sunny slopes, in hot pavement gardens or in rockeries.
Ornamental kale, lobelia, nemesia, pansy and primula are valuable for brightening entrances and patio containers. If your patio is lightly shaded, pots of clivia, fuchsia, primula and cineraria could be just what you need.
Spectacular shrubs
Spring is when many shrubs show off their flowers. Deutzias bear panicles of white flowers tinged with pink, and arching branches of weigela are covered in pink and red blooms. Viburnum plicatum with white flowers on layered branches, and the snowball bush, Viburnum opulus, are eye-catching, and yesterday-today-and-tomorrow (Brunsfelsia spp) and white cups of mock orange (Philadelphus coronarius) scent the garden.
Sunbirds arrive to feast on orange and yellow pincushion flowers of leucospermum, orange-red bottlebrush flowers of Greyia sutherlandii, and the tubular coral, orange and scarlet flowers of erythrinas.
Rothmannia globosa’s everyday name of September Bells tells of its flowering month and of the shape of its creamy, fragrant flowers. September is also the flowering time of shade-loving forest bell (Mackaya bella), a shrub with dark green leaves and dainty, white-striped mauve bell flowers.
Colourful trees
One of the prettiest of spring flowering trees is wild wisteria (Bolusanthus speciosus), with a height of 5m, brownish-black bark and mauve wisteria-like flower trusses. The boerbean (Schotia brachypetala) is an attractive shade tree (7m) that sheds its leaves in late winter before the dainty, cup-shaped red flowers appear in spring to provide a feast for nectar-feeding birds.
Plan ahead and plant roses that will spill over arches, cascade over walls and add vibrant colour to borders. If combined with purple and yellow bearded iris, mauve scabious, pink penstemon, dianthus, white candytuft or even lavender, your garden will be blooming for many weeks to come. - Daily News
For more information, see www.lifeisagarden.co.za