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 arborescens or Krantz Aloe as it is commonly known is a South African indigenous multi-stemmed, much-branched shrub up to 3 meters high and sometimes even 5 meters, with leaves in dense rosettes at the branch tips. Leaves are greyish green with yellow teeth. Inflorescences are usually simple with elongated-inverted conical, densely flowered racemes. It usually grows in pockets of rich soil on rocky outcrops in mountains in areas of high summer rainfall, but can also be found right up to the coast. The krantz aloe is very widely distributed in south eastern Africa from the Cape Peninsula, along the south and east coast of South Africa, as well as further north to Mozambique and the eastern mountains of Zimbabwe and Malawi. This variety bears striking red flowers. We also have a yellow flowering and orange flowering form available.