While you're out there planting colourful flowers, whether indigenous or exotic, make sure there is food for the little creatures and places for them to hide, and remember to check up on your compost heap.

Simple abundance

Bacopa is a lovely indigenous groundcover that is covered in masses of flowers from spring through to autumn.  A new variety with much bigger blooms, appropriately called Bacopa ‘Abunda’, has white or blue flowers that are double the size of the originals and that seem to glow against the dark green leaves.  This new Bacopa grows to about 25cm tall and can also be used as a border or edging (space plants 30cm apart).  It cascades beautifully, whether planted in a container, around the base of a taller plant or in hanging baskets.  It should be planted in full sun to semi shade in rich soil that is kept moderately moist at all times.  It tolerates heat well.

Indigenous plants are poised on the brink of Spring. Already, the winter-flowering plants are in full bloom, and the spring plants will begin flowering by mid-July if not earlier.

Believe it or not, this is actually the ‘pro-active’ time to start paying regular visits to your garden center. Most ‘reactive’ gardeners only begin to wake up from winter dormancy when spring’s in full swing – too late to ensure a show of gorgeous flowers for August / September, just when they’re hungriest for colour!

It is ‘non- sense’ this thing about winter. The garden supposedly goes to sleep, there is no colour and the big one…it’s really not the time to plant!!!!Well, very little sleeps in our winter besides us and there is a lot of action out there. What did I notice this week? Lemons dripping on the trees, avo’s galore, bougainvillea in full flower, lavenders falling over with flower spikes, Icebergs refusing to give up and a 101 bulbs popping out.

Chasmanthe aethiopica, you might know it as the Cobra Lily (no relation), or ‘Pimpiempie’ reminds us that winter fynbos is active and flowering all about us. Everyone gets excited at the mention of Boegoe. Rare! Medicinal! Difficult! Blah, blah, blah.  There are at least 20 members of this family in flower now; many can be bought at the nursery.

When we moved into our house, it had a very ugly concrete path leading from the front gate to the front door, and I thought it would be one of the first things we'd replace. After nearly two years we finally got around to it and it makes such a difference to the first impression of our home. We put in some genuine fake stone pavers in a warm tone that goes well with the warm creamy yellow of the house. In between those we planted plugs of tough-as-nails buffalo grass.

I made one foolish error, which was mixing in some bokashi compost in the hope of giving the buffalo grass the best possible start. With it lying so close to the surface, the dogs have been treating out front path as an all day buffet! I hope they have now got all the tasty bits out, and will leave the grass plugs to settle in.

But that's not the only path we've been working on recently. The ugly concrete pavers were flipped over to display their slightly less ugly side, and have been positioned as stepping stones around my veggie garden.

Say what? ‘Winter’ growing season? Yes, sure! It’s our rainy time, which means that this is the most sensible time to establish plants, especially those indigenous to the Cape.

When you plant a new nursery specimen, its roots are confined to the little space of the plant bag or pot. This is its most sensitive time. As soon as the roots begin to grow into the natural soil (establishing themselves), the plants become much more drought tolerant and need less additional watering.