Lighten our darkness

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

in Cape Town, South Africa

UPDATE September 2021 now Coleus madagascariensis

I'm lightly tweaking my False Bay Dozen for Diana. My garden is, was, and will be, about foliage (then flowers). A leafy collage gives a truer year round impression (our deciduous plants use the fresh new leaves to kick off the old ones, and only Nandina does autumn colour). With a second seasonal collage for the passing flowers.

Coleus madagascariensis

Coleus madagascariensis, Bulbine frutescens, Searsia crenata
Tecoma capensis, Grewia occidentalis
Five for False Bay in Dozen for Diana

Coleus madagascariensis

Coleus madagascariensis

Coleus madagascariensis

My fleeting impression of our future garden, was dense green with predominantly white flowers, a huge column of star jasmine. High walls and shady trees, although there are patches of sun – the garden will appreciate ‘lighten our darkness’. Interesting blonde foliage and pale flowers. Now I go with lively ivory and apple green Coleus madagascariensis. There are very delicate spires of white flowers, but unless you are on your knees with a camera – those flowers blur into the creamy leaf bits. One of those tough rewarding grow anywhere and thrive from harvested bits plants.  It has always been on my favourites list, from when I began choosing plants for my first garden!

Can be picked, and the pieces will root in the vase. If you brush up against it, the leaves have a pleasant, fresh, green smell, not scented exactly but distinctive. That is the downside of a vigorous pioneer – but just what you want, when you are desperate to get a bare patch of earth to look like a garden.

Coleus is part of the mint family, hence the fragrant, but not edible, leaves! In autumn the shrubby members, which prefer cool and shady homes, produce masses of delicate spires of flowers (think mint again, but mint on steroids!) in white or pink or all the purply shades. There are about 44 species. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with Madagascar, but comes from the Eastern Cape and Kwazulu/Natal. There you will also find the scented pelargoniums and the spekboom Portulacaria afra. All plants which have adapted to – the elephants have knocked a chunk off. Instead of lying down and dying, the piece says I’ll grow into a new plant here!

Coleus madagascariensis

Coleus madagascariensis

Second choices include cream and green striped Liriope or Sansevieria. Later I’ll chose a silvery grey leaf – Dusty Miller or Santolina, Helichrysum or one of our trailing daisies Arctotis. 

Coleus madagascariensis, Tecoma capensis, Grewia occidentalis
Bulbine frutescens
(Searsia crenata has TINY flowers = Five) for False Bay in Dozen for Diana

I wonder, whether that new life will mean more time in the garden in the evening? Altho I remember summer southeasters and the rare delight of a balmy, not windswept, summer evening when we lived in Camps Bay. Evenings in the garden revel in milky flowers that capture the dusk and moonlight. Arum lilies  wild freesias, Dimorphotheca jucunda,  delicate knoffel buchu, white Pelargonium,  barely pink Crassula ovata, butter yellow Tecoma,  cotton boll seedheads on camphor bush or wild rosemary, softly gilded seed plumes on Mexican feather grass,  white or sky blue Plumbago, proud and tall Van Staden’s daisy, or powder blue wild sage. 

Coleus madagascariensis
in a pot, and in our garden

From Donna in New York @ Garden's EyeView 'During the Middle Ages, European women embroidered a sprig of thyme on tunics for knights or gave them thyme leaves as a token of courage'

Wild ginger from Canada via Beth @ PlantPostings in Wisconsin. She tells us 'Its roots taste similar to culinary Ginger, according to the Missouri Botanical Garden, although I haven't tried it. I want every plant I have firmly in the soil'

Tecoma capensis looking at the leaves, not the flowers which are falling

Pictures and text by Diana Studer
AKA Diana of Elephant's Eye (on False Bay)
- wildlife gardening in Porterville,
near Cape Town in South Africa

(If you mouse over teal blue text,
it turns seaweed red.Those are my links.)