Elize introduced me to Clivias and in 1997 we bought our first orange Clivias for the garden from Koos Geldenhuys. He also became my mentor for Clivias. He showed us pictures of Clivias and when I saw Boesman, a green throat, I fell in love with it and knew that I wanted to breed green throats. Offsets of Green Throats were not available in those days and we frequented the nurseries for plants.

We had a lucky break when we bought a bronze green throat from a wholesale nursery, Frohman’s Eden, in the Mpumalanga Lowveld. The colour of the flowers was good but the shape needed improvement. Nevertheless I planted all the seeds.

When the seedlings flowered in 2002, we were over the moon and put one of them on show at the Jo’burg Show. It was awarded Best Green Throat and Second Runner-up on Show. Koos suggested, Gunston, as a name for it since the colour was similar to the color of a Gunston cigarette package.

Gunston and its brothers formed the core of my breeding program for the next few years since I believed in line breeding rather than mixed breeding. Although the Gunston brothers were not homogenous, I divided them into two groups according to the colour of the flowers. The one group was burnt orange/bronze and the second group dark orange/red. The first year I pollinated all of them and planted the seeds but soon realized that like most back yard Clivia growers, I did not have enough space to grow them all. I decided to just concentrate on the first group of burnt orange/bronze. When the first seedlings flowered, the second problem arose since I wanted to keep them all.

I took a step back and took a closer look at all my plants .I identified which characteristics I preferred – bronze/brown with a large white and prominent green throat. I also limited myself to only ten breeding plants. None of the plants confirmed to all the characteristics but I could select some that had some of the characteristics From Gunston and his brothers I selected only Gunston for its large white and green throat and Green Tambourine for its colour. For the flowering seedlings I used the same criteria to select plants and the prominent ones were High Hopes for its large white and green throat and Dusty and Desert Storm which were more brown than bronze. I used these plants in different combination for breeding and planted only ten to twenty seeds of each combination because of space limitation. The most outstanding plants of the next generation so far are Mrs. Brown and Sienna Bronze.

In 2004 I decided to sell some of my excess seeds at the Pretoria Show. At that stage, I was still very much a beginner with a collection of mainly oranges, a few yellows and green throats. After selecting the number of seeds from the different green throats for planting, I mix the rest and sold them as a “green throat mix”. This proved to be very unsuccessful and I sold only a few. People seem to prefer buying seeds from specific plants. I planted all the remaining seeds. When I transplanted the seedlings after six months I spotted five unpigmented seedlings and marked them as possible yellows. Three years later when the first two flowered, I was pleasantly surprised as they turned out to be “versi-coloured green throats”. Since they had only seven flowers each, we decided to call them “777’s “ I cross pollinated the two and although they only produced ten to fifteen seeds, all seedlings flowered with similar colouration in 2012.

After nearly fifteen years of breeding the Gunston line, I am still amazed at the variety of colour combinations one gets and will therefore continue using the Gunston progeny in my breeding program.

The advice we can give someone who starts with Clivia: Follow your heart and collect/breed Clivias that you like and not what’s popular. In the end you have to care for and enjoy your Clivias. Learn as much as possible about the breeding traits of the Clivias that you favour – it will save you time and money.