The Gardener Magazine

The Gardener is a monthly, national magazine dedicated to inspiring gardeners, providing practical advice and showing step-by-step garden projects. Our monthly features include garden design, in-depth plant features, growing vegetables and herbs, water gardening, garden wildlife and pets, specialist plant articles and much more. We have an extensive database on our website that is growing daily.

Welcome

FRESH PICKS AND CLIPS

LETTERS

Ask the team

Leon Kluge’s fynbos showstopper comes home

COVER STORIES

The garden that grew twice • What began with thousands of carefully propagated plants and a steep, neglected site became a layered garden filled with colour, movement and surprise. This remarkable landscape blends structured terraces, ingenious plantings and woodland pathways into a series of unforgettable garden experiences.

Gems FORGED IN FIRE • Inside Life After Fire, South Africa’s gold medal–winning tribute to the Cape’s pyrophytic plants at Chelsea 2026.

Dreaming OF CHELSEA • May’s most celebrated flower show may be a hemisphere away, but its 2026 lessons translate beautifully to South African gardens.

WHAT TO PLANT NOW

Planting WITH PURPOSE • The keys to unlocking lively ecosystems and supporting wildlife in suburban gardens and their immediate surroundings are keystone plants.

Choose semi-shade or sun colour • Spring is a time for bold, beautiful colour, and these plants are just the thing to provide that if you have a partial shady spot or bright sunlight.

The Year of the FICUS • The National Garden Bureau in the US declared 2026 the Year of the Ficus, so we thought we would take another look at these versatile houseplants.

Sort out summer with salvias • It can take as little as only three top-performing salvia hybrids to create a hot spot of blazing colour buzzing with bees, butterflies and nectar-eating birds…

Subscribe and win! • This month, stand a chance to win Husqvarna products valued at R9000!

IN THE FOOD GARDEN

ALL ABOUT onions • Many savoury dishes start with chopping an onion. Many then add garlic, and may even require a sprinkling of chopped chives at the end. That’s three types of alliums in one dish.

ASHWAGANDHA • One of the latest buzzwords we hear about, and apparently need in our diets, is ashwagandha. Interestingly, this plant has some origins in Africa, including South Africa.

5 GREEN SPRING veg • We are constantly being told to eat our green vegetables. But why?

September Vegetable sowing list

WATERING wisdom

3 super hedge plants • The very basic requirements of a good formal hedge plant are fast and dense, evergreen growth with a naturally neat habit, and fast re-growth after pruning.

Salvia ‘Black & Bloom’

PEST WATCH

5 important spring tasks

The cut of a conifer • Conifers grow actively in the cooler months, and if pruning a bit passed you by in winter, it can be done now, in early spring, while temperatures are still mild to cold.

What to sow now

SPRING CLEANING your lawn • Every lawn needs a bit of extra care after winter. The process varies slightly depending on your climate and the size of the lawn, but the concepts remain the same…

DEEP ROOTS: Why the Wild Olive is the tree of our past and our future

TALL and elegant

‘Petite butterfly’

IN THE NURSERY

NEW

Using grow sticks to feed your houseplants

The rose for sunlit gardens

11 tips to boost your plants • Plants coming out of dormancy and a winter rest will need nutrients to build up their cells, roots, stems, and leaves to resist the pests, diseases, and the environmental stresses of summer, and that’s where...