In the garden of the Kwazulu-Natal Herbarium in Durban, this tree grows with minimal attention and delights us with two flushes of its white flowers each year. We use it as part of a screen between Medley Wood House and the main walk of the Botanic Gardens below us. It would be a splendid small feature tree for a smaller garden in a warm area like ours, as its growth is not quite as rampant as many other garden favourites here.

Cultivation of many plants in Durban follows the routine 'plan it, plant it, cut it back', but this tree in our garden seems to respond quite happily to a modified routine of 'plan it, plant it, ignore it'. It grows quite happily in our red sandy soil, and is well adapted to our relatively high rainfall, which averages 1007 mm per year.

We have not recently seen any pests on the tree, but I would assume that it is subject to the usual range of resident fungi and insects if stressed. The tree shows slight evidence of termite attack some time in the past. This appears to have been dealt with successfully by the use of a registered insecticide.

According to Pooley, this tree is best raised from seed. However, its presence on the 2005 Botanical Society plant sale in Durban suggests to me that a much easier way of raising these trees involves buying a young plant from an indigenous nursery. One warning to growers who do this: many if not most leguminous trees have are tap-roots, and do not take kindly to having the main root injured or disturbed. Be careful, therefore, to make the hole you plant the tree in deep enough, and do not disturb the root ball more than is absolutely necessary when freeing it from the bag and planting it.