Aloes are very popular and some of the most rewarding plants to cultivate. They make excellent accent plants owing to their often strange and inspiring architectures, as well as the bright flowers that offset the grey-green leaves. They are also very suitable as container plants and small aloes can be used very effectively as border plants at the edge of a bed. Although aloes are most often included in rockeries, their application in horticulture is not limited to this feature and they can be used in almost any setting and in conjunction with most common garden plants. Their natural adaptation to harsh and often arid climates makes aloes outstanding subjects for the water-wise garden. Aloe is a genus in the Asphodeloideae family containing about 600 species of flowering succulent plants. Aloes are sometimes confused with Agaves. Contrarily to Agaves, Aloe leaves contain a gel like sap. Another difference is that Aloes don’t die after blooming as most Agaves do.

Aloe distans commonly known as Jewelled Aloe or Golden Tooth Aloe is a sprawling aloe that crawls along the ground or climbs up over rocks or other obstacles with long trailing stems bearing blue green leaves tipped with a tight rosette of these leaves, which are about 12.5cm in diameter, which have golden spines on the margins. The plants sucker along its stems so that the many outwardly moving heads radiate a meter or more out from the center. The largest can be up to 3 meters across. Older stems are bare near the center showing silver gray stems clinging to the ground. In mid-summer to autumn appear the capitate heads of coral tubular flowers. Plant Aloe distans in full sun to light shade. It does best in cooler coastal climates where it requires little and only occasional irrigation. This plant is drought tolerant and fire-retardant and frost hardy to the low -5°C. It makes a great addition as a low plant in a large space where it has room to spread.