Growing Clivia: A Care Calendar for the Southern Hemisphere

Daniel Pretorius · 5 min read · 25 August 2026

Clivia are forgiving plants, and most of the skill in growing them well comes down to reading the seasons. They are woodland plants from South Africa, semi-epiphytic, evergreen, and adapted to shade, a wet summer, and a dry winter. Get the light, the mix, the water, and the winter rest right, and flowering follows. This is a plain guide to each of those, and a simple month-by-month calendar for the southern hemisphere, drawn from the Clivia Society standards and long-established practice.

Light and position

Clivia want bright shade, never direct midday sun. In the wild (Clivia miniata is the most grown) they live on shaded, often south-facing slopes under trees. Per the Clivia Society standards they tolerate early morning sun but not midday or afternoon sun, which scorches the leaves; too much shade, on the other hand, gives poor flowering. The practical target for a South African garden is morning sun with afternoon shade, or bright dappled shade all day. In a shade house, around 80 percent shade cloth suits them, and young plants in particular do best in dappled light. Grown indoors, they want a bright spot out of direct sun; too little light means no flowers.

Potting mix and drainage

This is the single biggest lever on plant health. Clivia are not soil plants: their thick white roots are built for life in leaf litter, with plenty of air around them, and in ordinary soil they often rot. Per the Clivia Society standards, properly composted pine bark is the South African standard and the best readily available medium, coarse for mature plants and finer for seedlings. Aim for a slightly acidic mix, about pH 5.5 to 6.5.

A few drainage rules are worth stating plainly:

Keep the whole pot one medium. Do not put gravel or polystyrene in the bottom "for drainage"; a layered pot actually traps a wet zone at the base.
Give water somewhere to go: stand pots on sand or capillary matting rather than up on bricks.
Tall pots drain better than short ones, and mixing very different particle sizes (fine sand into bark) drains worse, not better.

Watering

Clivia are evergreen and never fully stop growing, but they grow fast in warm weather and slow when it is cold. Water to match: generous through the warm growing season, much less in winter. Per the Clivia Society standards, start liberal watering when the plants show signs of life in spring, carry on through the season, and taper off as temperatures fall in late autumn; many growers stop watering almost entirely in the coldest months. In a free-draining mix in a high-rainfall area, potted plants may need little extra water at all. The winter dry spell is not neglect: it protects against cold-and-wet rot and it helps set the next flush of flowers.

Feeding

Clivia have simple needs and respond to most general fertilisers, but balance matters more than quantity. Per the Clivia Society standards, keep nitrogen and potassium roughly in balance (N to K about 1:1 to 1:2). Too much nitrogen gives lush leaves and few flowers, and a shortage of potassium can make the flowers open down among the leaves instead of on a tall scape. A slow-release granule or a dilute liquid feed through the growing season works well; feed in spring and again in autumn, water it in, and keep fertiliser off the stem. Stop feeding through the dormant winter months. Growers using a lean medium like bark or sand need to feed a little more attentively than those in a compost-rich mix, which may need almost nothing.

Temperature and the winter rest that triggers flowering

Clivia grow best in mild warmth and slow or stall in real heat or cold. The key to flowering is the cool winter rest. South African practice is to curtail water in late autumn and stop feeding through winter, giving the plant a drier, cooler pause before spring. A cool rest of roughly six to eight weeks at about 10 to 15 degrees Celsius (above freezing) helps the plant set flower buds and push up a scape that clears the leaves; without it, plants tend to flower short, down among the foliage, with shorter-lived blooms. Plants typically come into flower about two months after the rest ends. The exact temperatures here are guidance rather than a hard rule, but the principle, cooler and drier in winter, is well established.

Most of South Africa is mild enough to grow Clivia outdoors in shade all year. Where hard frost is a risk, on the highveld for instance, move plants under cover or into a greenhouse for winter and back into dappled shade for summer.

A month-by-month calendar (southern hemisphere)

The Clivia Society calendar marks the active months for each task. In brief:

Spring (September to November): the main flowering flush. Resume liberal watering, start feeding, and pot on. The best time to divide is once flowering ends.
Summer (December to February): active growth. Feed and water freely, plant out seedlings, and watch hardest for the amaryllis borer.
Autumn (about March to May): seed ripens on plants that flowered; harvest berries once they soften. Keep feeding into early autumn, then ease off, and begin tapering water as it cools.
Winter (June to August): the cool, dry rest. Curtail watering, stop feeding, and let the plants pause. This is the quiet season that pays off in spring.

Seed sowing runs from about June through spring, and potting on and dividing are best around spring and cooler autumn, when fungal infection is less likely. Feed in the warm half of the year, and keep an eye out for pests from spring through to autumn.

None of this is fussy work. Bright shade, an open free-draining mix, water that follows the seasons, modest balanced feeding, and a genuine cool rest in winter are the whole of it. Do those five things, and Clivia reward the patience with their slow, deliberate, and unmistakable flowers.