Cape Flats Gardening Guide
🌿
May & June activities in the Garden
🌿
As the Cape’s winter edges closer, May and June bring a gentle rhythm to the garden. Rain begins to fall more often, soaking the soil and helping roots settle in. It’s a season of preparation, tidying, and planting. A time when small efforts now will reward you with lush growth later.
❄️ Winter preparation
- Clear gutters, downpipes, drainage channels, and stormwater drains to prevent flooding during heavy winter rains.
- Spike compacted lawns with a garden fork, fill holes with sand or old potting soil, and sprinkle bonemeal to encourage healthy root growth.
✂️ Gentle garden maintenance
- Tidy up summer- and autumn-flowering shrubs including Barleria, Plumbago, ribbon bush, and wild dagga.
- Prune Plectranthus after flowering and root cuttings in a cool, shaded area.
- Add compost around shrubs and perennials, avoiding direct contact with stems.
- Relocate struggling shrubs while the soil is moist and cool.
🌱 Soil Care
Healthy soil is the foundation of a thriving garden.
 |
| Healthy compost |
- Spread compost generously over garden beds twice a year.
- No digging needed, let earthworms and soil microbes do the work naturally.
🌿 Featured winter plant
 |
| Metalasia muricata |
Metalasia muricata is a hardy indigenous shrub with fine foliage and creamy flower heads, ideal for water-wise and fynbos gardens.
🌿 Winter planting
This is an excellent planting season for indigenous and Cape Flats species:
.jpg) |
| Flowering Jordaaniella dubia |
- Conicosia pugioniformis (pigroot)
- Euphorbia mauritanica (yellow milk bush)
- Helichrysum capitatum (imphepho)
- Jordaaniella dubia (matvygie)
- Metalasia muricata (wild olive)
- Olea europaea subsp. africana (blombos)
- Ruschia macowanii (beach tentifig)
- Salvia aurea (brown sage)
- Searsia crenata (dune crowberry)
- Senecio halimifolius (tabakbos)
Feed flowering aloes with compost (available at our next plant sale for only R35) to encourage dazzling winter blooms.
🪴 Containers & window boxes
Brighten patios and windowsills with:
- Gazanias
- Geraniums
- Diascias
- Osteospermum
🌼 Indigenous & fynbos magic
Try these winter performers:
- Agathosma serpyllacea (wildeboegoe)
- Coleonema pulchellum (confetti bush)
- Euryops abrotanifolius (lace-leaf euryops)
- Euryops pectinatus (golden euryops)
- Osteospermum moniliferum (bietou)
- Phylica ericoides (heath phylica)
- Salvia scabra (coast blue sage)
- Strelitzia reginae (bird of paradise)
Together, these plants create a colourful, textured, and uniquely Cape winter garden
Please support our next plant sale on Friday, 29 May, where you can buy many of these resilient, dazzling indigenous plants at very affordable prices!
Kindly refer to the brochure for more details
