Caxton magazines staffA steep, sloping area at the entrance to this Fish Hoek property has been transformed into a terraced garden filled with colourful pincushions, vibrant leucadendrons and aromatic confetti bushes
The owner’s brief to landscape designer Steven Longman was to plant the entrance garden with a warm and welcoming palette of red, orange and yellow plants, and to cultivate a small lawn. The garden has been designed to provide a sheltered spot where the owners can entertain their friends next to the braai or relax with a sundowner or a book.
The garden is almost completely indigenous. It features plants such as white confetti bushes (Coleonema spp.) and a variety called ‘Sunset Gold’ which can withstand semi-shade. Steve opted for plants such as Leucadendron ‘Jester’, which is slow growing but has wonderfully variegated leaves, Leucadendron ‘Jade Pearl’ for its lime-coloured foliage, and orange pincushions for their vibrant colour and ability to attract birds to the garden. The owner made a special request to also include pelargoniums.
It was initially planned to make the lower entrance terrace wall-to-wall lawn, but Steve softened the edges of this terrace with a bed of Dietes bicolor. As regular restio grasses would grow too tall for this small garden, he also included a more compact dwarf restio (Elegia tectorum ‘Fish Hoek’).
This garden is designed to be low maintenance, and Steve comes in every three months to cut back, deadhead and put Bounce Back around all the plants. “The grass is fed and I do a lawn dressing in spring to rejuvenate it,” he says. “I also spray a foliar feed onto the foliage of the plants. Kelpak liquid organic feed combined with Trelmix is used, which takes care of the micro-elements such as magnesium that often get leached out of the soil. It gets absorbed nicely though the foliage.”
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