Mediterranean Garden Society
Mediterranean Garden Society
My Aloe Journey
by Andrew Sloan
photographs by Andrew Sloan
Photographs to illustrate the article published in The Mediterranean Garden No. 107, January 2022
The photo at the top of this page shows a view of Andrew Sloan’s aloe garden with Echinocactus grusonii and a flowering Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi mixed in with the aloes
Andrew Sloan writes: “My aloe journey began with seeing a Palestine sunbird feeding on the nectar of the flowers of an Aloe africana in the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens on the MGS trip there in 2011 and has led me to become a very keen grower of aloes and other succulents in our garden in southern Spain. When I last wrote about this in 2016 I mentioned that there are more than 500 aloe species but in fact the discovery of new plants and improved information sources has led to the current figure of 617 aloe species in South and Southern Africa, East Africa, Madagascar and the Arabian Peninsula.”
I have 133 of these identified species, not counting many seedlings I have under development as I prefer not to count them until they are well established. Patience is a great virtue in gardening; in the case of aloes it can take three to four years before a plant grown from seed gives its first flowers, a very exciting moment.
I was very lucky to obtain some excellent seeds of some of the large tree aloes when I started in 2011 and these now flower regularly every winter. My favourites are a red-flowering Aloe ferox, yellow-flowering A. thraskii and the A. africana whose parent so inspired me. They are all over two metres tall during their glorious inflorescence stage and the flowers generally last from four to six weeks, which is the great advantage of aloes.
The height of their flowering stalks is something I find very attractive; many of the medium-sized aloes have wide, low-spreading leaves up to 40cm in height yet the multi-branched inflorescence reaches up to two metres in height in aloes like A. dyeri, A. fosteri and A. immaculata.
The variety in the size and shape of aloes has been very useful to me in achieving what I believe to be a nice mix. Our main garden is four metres deep and 50 metres wide so this has allowed me to plant the larger aloes at the back, the medium ones in the middle and the smaller and cascading aloes at the front. We have added other succulents to provide a variety of shape and colour and I particularly like to use sedums such as S. nussbaumerianum with its copper tones and S. rubrotinctum for its red, as well as blue Senecio talinoides and lots of crassulas and cacti.
My latest venture is a batch of 17 East African aloe seeds, principally from Ethiopia and Uganda, which I germinated at the beginning of September. I have shared the seeds with an expert grower friend in the Canary Islands and we have both successfully germinated all 17 varieties albeit in different quantities ranging from one to 20. I believe these to be the first of these species in Europe and our intention is to share the plants with other aloe enthusiasts when they are big enough in a couple of years. Small aloe plants can easily be sent by post within Europe, shaking the earth off their roots and packaging them carefully protected by newspaper or tissues in a small box. For me it is like the excitement of a combined birthday and Christmas when I receive such a package and open it to find the promised plants and usually a surprise present or two. The plants can survive several weeks of transit but need to be managed carefully upon arrival as they have not seen light for a while so I keep them in the shade at first and gradually reintroduce them to light and then sun.
A number of recent articles in the journal refer to global warming and its implications. We have had the hottest summer in our 25 years of living here with at least seven days with temperatures of over 40 degrees. I stuck to my watering regime of going around the garden with a hose early in the morning every three weeks and most of the aloes and other succulents have survived with no damage despite looking quite stressed at times. The smaller and younger plants are the ones that suffered most and a number have had to be replaced but the larger plants with well-established roots are fine. I think it helps to provide shade to the roots, which I do with stones and small rocks that are also quite attractive in appearance. They are also having to get by with very little rain as so far, up to the time of writing in mid-November, we have only had 50 mm.
We also have a number of aloes in pots and they are easier to manage during heatwaves as they can be moved around to a shadier, cooler position. I water these once a week in the summer, again first thing in the morning. If the plant gets too big for its pot I either replant it in a bigger pot or trim its roots, add a little bit of compost to the base and return it to its pot. The leaves of aloes which get stressed by being in a small pot or from extreme weather often turn a lovely reddish colour. Aloes actually prefer to be rootbound rather than planted in too big a pot, just as they get by better with too little water rather than overwatering.
Most aloes are not self-pollinators, therefore two plants of the same species are needed to produce true seeds of that particular plant. Aloes grown from seeds arising from uncontrolled pollination in a garden are therefore likely to be hybrids. Hybridisation of aloes is an expanding business in California, Australia and South Africa and some very attractive plants are now available, growing in popularity as they tend to be stronger, faster-growing plants with showy flowers.
Some of my favourite aloes in our garden are hybrids which I have been given as cuttings or grown from seed, as for example a particularly attractive aculeata petricolacross of which I have three plants. They are now 10 years old and have reached a height and width of one metre, doubling in height when the orange flowers appear in late winter.
Growing from seed is very satisfying but does take longer than growing from a cutting or offshoot. Small plants are now available at specialist online nurseries in Europe like CB Succulentes (for Madagascar aloes), Desertica or Joel Lode at Cactus Aventures. I have also imported plants from the excellent Institute for Aloe Studies run by John B. Miller in California who has a superb list of quality plants.
I hope I have transmitted some of the enormous satisfaction that I have got from my aloe journey and I shall finish as I did my last article by saying that collecting aloes seems to be addictive - but I think it is a healthy addiction…
Photos of the aloes mentioned in this article can be seen in the Plant Gallery section of the website, along with 50 other aloes.
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