This easy-care, highly-productive, showy flower makes an ideal addition to a home garden. Gazania, (Gazania rigens) also known as Treasure Flower and African Daisy, can be grown as an annual or perennial. How to grow Gazania without fail can be done by planting in a sunny location.
Growing Location
Gazania can be grown outdoors planted directly into the soil or in containers. The plant will also thrive indoors in a container as long as it receives plenty of direct sun exposure.
Grow Gazania in the sunniest location you have, soil conditions are secondary. Heat and salty ocean air will not hinder this hardy plant from thriving.
Soil
This flowering beauty will thrive in soil that other flowers cannot. Poor, sandy soil is an ideal home for this plants’ roots. The plant is drought-tolerant and does not like to be overwatered.
When planted in a container, create a planting medium that is 1/4 sand so the Gazania will grow without fail and produce an abundance of blooms.
High Impact, Low Maintenance
The plant will reach 6-12 inches (15 – 30 cm) tall when mature and produce runners about the same length. The center of the plant will create a mound with grass-like foliage. The runners will extend from the center and will trail along the ground or spill over a container.
The blooms are brightly colored in shades of red, yellow, white, pink, and orange. The only maintenance required is regular dead-heading of the spent blooms to keep the plant blooming from spring until the end of summer. The flowers close at night and the best time for deadheading is mid-morning when the flowers are fully open.
The plant is drought and heat tolerant but during times of prolonged drought water Gazania plants once a week. Plant food is not needed but a light feeding with your favorite type of organic plant food in the spring won’t hurt the plants.
Planting Gazania
Start the plant from seeds sown directly into the ground after all danger of frost has passed in the spring.
Once the plant has been established it can be propagated from cuttings. Take a 4-inch (10 cm) cutting from the bottom of the plant, dip the cut end into rooting hormone, and place in a small container of sandy potting soil until roots develop. This is a good way to overwinter the plant indoors or to ensure plenty of new plants for spring planting.
Hardy Ground Cover
Gazania is a low-growing trailing plant that is often used as a ground cover in areas that have poor soil. The flowering plants are great for use as an ornamental ground cover and can replace a traditional lawn in sections of the landscape that you don’t want to mow or is difficult to grow grass.
Plant facts
| Common name | gazania, treasure flower, African daisy |
| Light | full sun |
| Soil type | sand, loam |
| Soil drainage | moist but well-drained |
| Height x Width | 0.5-1 feet (15 – 30 cm) x 0.5-1 feet (15 – 30 cm) |
| Flowering seasons | late spring, early summer |
| Life span | Perennials |
| Plant hardiness zones | 8 – 11 |
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