Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

It was labelled as a "Jatrofa"

As far as I know it is evergreen but that will always depend on the temperatures in winter where you live.

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

Well first off, one of my fave plants, the Hottentot Fig (Carpobrotus edulis) why it isn't grown everywhere I will never know, I am aware that it doesn't flower all year round but the flowers are an absolute joy and the leaves are enough of a feature to make it interesting all year round, and it will cover any patch of ground.

The only problem with "geraniums" is the Northern Aspect, they will still grow but you will get those annoying browning stems and they won't thrive to be honest!

I always think that its nice to do something a little different in a garden, so..... instead of the usual trellis or pergola why not grow some bougainvillea as a ground cover, it will reward you with a mass of flowers and it will be a real talking point.

Don't forget that if you are mixing plants up you need to try and give everything a good start and a good grounding, plenty of nitrogen poor feed and you will get masses of flowers and not a massive amount of growth.

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

This is nice. I have seen this before.....isn't this the stuff that is often growing in the sand dunes at the beach? Googling I could only see pink and yellow flowers. Does it come in red (or white)?

I don't mind about not flowering all year round, in fact I don't mind if it doesn't flower at all.....I just want a nice looking green "carpet" 12 months a year.

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

That´s "Lion´s toe", isn´t it?

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

Hmmm.... interesting.......


Maybe somewhere the answer can be found eh?

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

There is a plant that goes by the name of various bits of a lion - Lion's Paw, Lion's Tail etc but it is nothing like the purple plant shown.

It's a lovely plant - we have 3 - but it's orange.

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/1048/

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

Yes, it comes in many colours, we have had tem in yellow, red and orange as well as the purple, some are a bit smaller, but the smaller ones do tend to have more flowers outside the main flowering season.
The problems you might have had with geraniums could well be the geranium moth, which needs to be sprayed for weekly in summer in Spain, causes the problems you mentioned.

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

Thanks for this Mike. As I mentioned before, googling I could only find lots of pictures of the purple/pink and yellow varieties which would be no good for me. I suppose the reds and whites must be a bit rarer then.

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

we found them in several colours in local garden centres, the flowers were a little smaller.

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

Have you thought of looking at a small leaved cotonaster or a hebe pingifolia pagii.

Both are ground cover, both are green all year round, hebe from memory has small flowers but grown more for the greenery and cotonaster has berries.

Alternatively go for a low growing fir, has nothing special to offer and is slow growing but will be low to the ground.

Hope this helps a little.

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

Lion's claw or lion's toenail is the best name I heard.

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

Looks like mesembryanthem to me. Our garden is full of the purple one like the picture. Its perfect ground cover, needs hardly any water (except to get it started) does well in shade and survives full sun. It flowers in spring and then sporadically after that depending on how much sun and water it gets. Its great for covering steep banks to retain soil.

On the down side I have found that it sucks all the available water from the ground so that it can be difficult to grow other things close to it. For that reason I wouldn't recommend it next to roses etc.

I've seen red, orange, white, yellow and pink versions in garden centres. They have smaller leaves and flowers and are not such good ground cover as the larger purple type.

Rose

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

Its a Carpobrutus Edulis. Trust me.

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

Same thing - my gardening book says carpobrotus is a genus of mesembryanthemum (usually shortened to 'mesem') in garden centres. Apparently C Edulis is a South African species. The book complains that garden centres tend to lump 'a large number of plants indiscriminately into the mesem category' and very seldom name them. Thats certainly the case around here although I have never seen C Edulis on sale only the smaller mesems. We got ours from cuttings and as it spreads so fast there's always plenty of it.

Rose

Re: Some gardening advice please!
 

If you mean the Mesembryanthemum then no, its not the same, it used to be but it has been re classified, like I said, the OP's photo is Carpobrutus Edulis.



As an aside, you might want to buy a more modern gardening reference book.