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 baren 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 every morning and bring in colour.
Climbing, quick spreaders
Indigenous splendours:
- Pink trumpet vine (podranea ricasoliana) is a full sun plant, boasting an abundance of fragrant lilac-pink flowers. Vigorous, rambling and great for beginners.
- Starry wild jasmine (jasminiummultipartitum) rewards gardens with a delicious sweet scent emitted by star-shaped 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 (tecomariacapensis) flourish in full sun where tubular blooms in red, orange, yellow and salmon can climb up to three metres high.
Worldly charms:
- Star jasmine (trachelospermum jasminoides) is a highly fragrant climber and ground cover. Blooms perform best in full sun, but they also do well in semi-shade.
- For climbing roses, try the stamina rose. This pink-purple plant parades over arches and windowsills. It’s also hardy and disease-resistant.
- Flowering ivy (senecio macroglossus) is a bright little explorer with yellow daisy-like flowers between dark green foliage. They enjoy full sun to semi-shaded areas.
- Potato vine (solanum jasminoides) has clusters of fragrant, dainty light-blue or white blooms that’ll make quick work of full sun, trellised walls and arches.
Ground covering crawlers
Ornamental grass:
- Ophiopogon japonicus ‘kyoto’ is an exceptional tuft-forming no-mow grass that’s ideal as a plant filler in full sun to semi-shade. It’s cold and frost-hardy.
- Zoisia tenuifolia grows low to the ground and often has a wavey appearance, making it a top architectural plant that’ll cover any space with full sun to semi-shade.
- 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 clusters of star-shaped blooms that spread out.
- 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.
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