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 speciosa commonly known as Tilt-Head Aloe is a handsome plant having ornamental blue-green leaves with deep pink to light red, jagged leaf margins, and crowded cylindrical flower heads of red buds, opening greenish white in spring-summer. What makes this species easy to distinguish is that the head of the rosette of leaves is almost always tilted to one side. The flowers are rich in nectar, attracting sunbirds, bees & butterflies. The main pollinators are sunbirds. The rosettes of Aloe speciosa are often tilted to one side, to allow the plant to obtain the maximum amount of light. In the southern hemisphere, the tilt is usually towards the north, and in the northern hemisphere, towards the south, but a plant growing in a shady position would tilt its head in the direction that it receives the most light, which is not necessarily the north/south. Aloe speciosa is an attractive aloe with great horticultural potential and is often grown in gardens. Being drought resistant it is an ideal plant for the water-wise garden.