Light up the house – and your life – with one of winter’s prettiest and most rewarding plants, the cyclamen The colours are sumptuous and the flowers unique, with dipping heads and twirly, upswept petals, often with a darker eye, in white and every shade of pink, from shell to crimson - and cyclamen, of course. The leaves are also quite beautiful, heart-shaped and patterned or marbled with silver.Cyclamen are tuberous plants of the Mediterranean, growing in woodland, scrub and high meadow from northeast Spain to Italy, Turkey, Iran and North Africa. There are about 20 species, but winter-flowering Cyclamen persicum is the parent of most indoor varieties, with numerous spectacular offspring.There are also exquisite, dainty miniatures; it's lovely to group pots of large, medium and small types together. Single plants also look particularly beautiful if pots are sunk in a wide bowl with a surround of gravel or moss.Indoors, with proper care, cyclamen will bloom lavishly for three to four months. But they can also be grown very successfully outdoors, where they will flower for even longer. Plant them in a cool, sheltered spot, with some morning sun, and they should naturalise and flower year after year.LOCAL EXPERT LOUISE HECKER'S TIPS FOR CYCLAMEN SUCCESS• Choose carefully: when buying a plant, make sure that there are plenty of new buds at the centre and no signs of wilting.• Keep them cool: indoors they should be in a cool, brightly lit area with a daytime temperature of below 20°C and between 6°C and 15°C at night. Temperatures above 20°C may induce the plant to go dormant. Avoid exposure to afternoon sun. It's a good idea to put plants outdoors at night, but make sure they are not exposed to frost.• Water correctly: the best way is from below, to avoid getting water on the crown of the plant. Stand the pot in a basin of water for about an hour and then allow it to drain before replacing on its saucer. Pots must be allowed to dry out between waterings. Cyclamen in the garden can simply be watered around the base.• Feed with a liquid fertiliser such as Nitrosol at least once a month• Remove spent blooms and yellow leaves by twisting the stems from the crown.• Rest: when growth starts dying down in early summer, reduce watering and allow plants to dry out and rest. Put pots in a cool, shady place; when growth begins again in autumn, gradually start watering again. This is a good time to repot. Cyclamen tubers in the garden can be left in place, but do remember to mark where they are.For more information visit heckers.co.za and cyclamen.org...