Aloe aristata, the Bearded Aloe, is the hardiest of all Aloes and is capable of surviving the British winter outdoors and will tolerate extremes of both cold and wet during the bleakest winter months providing it has a well-drained gritty soil. It can take severe frost, snow and that defining feature of British weather - lots of rain. In the summer, it can survive for months without ever needing to be watered.

It is without spines and is soft and extremely tactile to the touch and with its geometrical symmetric shape makes a perfect container plant, either indoors or out in the garden, looking great in a terracotta planter.

In summer, the Bearded Aloe - or Torch Aloe as it is sometimes called - freely produces a tall inflorescence of soft orange flowers.

The secret to growing it successfully is to make sure its roots are in a very gravelly, sandy mix with very little organic matter so that water doesn't accumulate. If the ground has been prepared like this, it can be grown directly in the garden without any container, where it will gradually form a large clump.

Aloe aristata is native to the alti-montane grasslands of the Drakensberg and Malutis mountains in Lesotho where it grows up to an altitude of 7500 feet and is protected in the Drakensberg Ukhahlamba National Park along Lesotho’s border with South Africa. It is also found in the Karoo, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Aloe aristata has become increasingly rare in the wild through illegal harvesting but is relatively common in cultivation.

This plant is yours FREE with your first order!

One of the guiding principles at Tropical Britain is generosity. We have always modeled our business on the abundance of Nature. Every year, plants produce thousands, sometimes millions of seeds. They just keep giving. Our business model tries to emulate this... the incredible abundance of Nature. We regularly give away extra plants for free, give out tons of useful informational content on our website and provide regular generous discount codes to our Plant Alerts newsletter subscribers. From the very beginning we have given away a FREE Trachycarpus fortunei (Windmill Palm) seedling as an introductory offer to every new customer. So if this is your first visit here, don't forget to click your Trachycarpus into your shopping cart as well as this Aloe aristata.

One FREE Aloe aristata per customer. Don't be greedy! If you click two into your cart you will get one!

Nature gives. Be like Nature.

Like most of our plants, these Aloe aristata are grown by us at our Surrey nursery. It's a fabulous plant and very easy to grow and it produces many offsets every year. As your plant will also produce offsets, you too will be able to give them away to your friends as gifts.