Spekboom has a reputation as a miracle carbon plant — the honest version is more interesting than the marketing.
Part of the Wildfarm network — Wildfarm Homestead
Spekboom in short
Spekboom has a reputation as a miracle carbon plant — the honest version is more interesting than the marketing.
How to get it right
- Its CAM photosynthesis lets it keep working in heat when other plants shut down, so it can store carbon in dry conditions.
- Thick stands of spekboom in the Eastern Cape are genuinely productive carbon sinks — a single pot plant is not.
- The real climate win for a garden is ground cover that survives without irrigation and replaces bare, eroding soil.
Where most people slip up
- Believing a few potted plants offset a household’s emissions.
- Planting spekboom where it is not wanted and calling it restoration.
Living and growing plants in the Garden Route
AloeRoots grows and sells spekboom and aloes from Wilderness in the Garden Route. Every plant we send out is grown here, in this climate — the same wet winters and salty wind your garden has to live with.
Get plants or ask a question
Tell us what you are planting — a hedge, a rockery, a pot on a stoep — and we will point you at the right plants and the right size.
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