Durban — Climbing plants and ground covers are the easiest way to level up your gardening game.
Bring walls to life, add privacy with hedges, decorate arches dripping with roses, cover up barren spaces, create curtains of greenery for the patio, get your windowsills bustling with bees and butterflies, attract more birds, smell the sweet essence of flowers bring in colour. Here’s some inspiration to get you going.
CLIMBING, QUICK SPREADERS
Indigenous splendours:
Pink trumpet vine (podranea ricasoliana) is a full sun beauty, boasting an abundance of fragrant lilac-pink flowers. Vigorous, rambling, and great for beginners.
Starry wild jasmine (jasminium multipartitum) rewards gardens with a delicious sweet scent emitted by stars-haped blooms. They like morning/ afternoon sun.
Flame creeper (combretum microphyllum) is a truly spectacular specimen with flaming crimson flowers for the larger garden with ample sun.
Cape honeysuckle (tecomaria capensis) flourish in full sun where tubular blooms in red, orange, yellow, and salmon can climb up to 3m high.
Worldly charms:
Star jasmine (trachelospermum jasminoides) is a fragrant climber and ground cover. Blooms perform best in full sun but also do well in semi-shade.
For climbing roses, try the Stamina Rose. This pink-purple babe parades over arches and windowsills.
Flowering ivy (senecio macroglossus) is a bright little explorer with yellow daisy-like flowers between dark green foliage. They enjoy full sun to semishaded areas.
Potato vine (solanum jasminoides) has fragrant, dainty light-blue or white blooms that’ll make quick work of full sun, trellised walls and arches.
GROUND COVERING CRAWLERS
Ornamental grass
Kyoto (ophiopogon japonicus) is a tuft-forming no-mow grass that’s ideal as a plant filler in full sun to semi-shade. They’re cold and frost-hardy too.
Zoisia tenuifolia grass grows low to the ground and often has a wavey appearance, making it a top architectural plant that will cover any space with full sun to semi-shade.
Silver carpet (dymondia margaretae) is a special, sun-loving, carpet-forming cover that’s hardy, fast-growing, good against wind erosion and perfect as a filler between pavers.
White carpet (falkia repens) grows low to the ground, bearing small pink flowers that create a wonderful indigenous “daisy lawn” in full sun or semi-shaded areas.
Flowering thrills
Lamium, or dead nettle, is a shade lover with variegated leaves and sweet blooms of white, pink, and purple. Great for beginners and not prone to pests or disease.
Spanish daisy (erigeron karvinskianus) will transform your garden into an exquisite fairy landscape with masses of pink and white blooms. They like sun and semi-shade.
Sedum is a sun-loving, hardy, perky perennial with fleshy leaves and star-shaped blooms that spread out and have a most pretty party in the garden.
Bacopa (sutera cordata) is a South African stunner that’s easy and versatile. Plants are covered in tiny white/ lavender/pink flowers that enjoy the sun or semi-shade.
Be sure to visit your Garden Centre Association Garden Centre to check out which of these lovelies are available to plant now. To help your climbers along, install trellis support for them to play on. Garden centres are stocked with goodies for creepers and nutritious compost and soil to help establish your new ground covers.
Independent on Saturday