The advantages of cold.

There is not a lot to like about winter, but if the plants do get through the stress creates some great colour. One plant that is putting on a particular good show this year is the sedeveria letizia. You may remember one was planted out as a test and the main rosettes got through and have coloured up perfectly.

Good to see it is going to flower as well. It has very pretty pure white flowers and is one of my favourite flowers for this group of plants. 

The main plant was in the green house over winter, so not only got cold but was not watered. The double stress has made the colour even stronger.

The whole plant is a real feature at the moment and as the colour fades, the mutltiple flower stalks will take over to keep it looking good. 

Really need to give it a nicer pot and make more of a feature of it. I must find somewhere in London that sells really nice terracotta pots.

Time to cut up some plants.

It has been a summer of two halves weather wise; June & July were lovely and hot, then August arrived and it has been much colder and wetter.  So with wetter weather over the weekend it was time to rectify some of the neglect and get in the greenhouse.  With all the work going on with planting the succulent rockeries everything else has taken a back seat. First job to sort out some of the more unkempt plants.

Some like xGraptosedum 'Medterranean Mystery' have suffered from lack of water and low light. 

A hybrid apparently common in Europe it is a lovely little plant and quite tough.  I am trying one outside unprotected this winter as it is been fine under rain covers before.  As they grow they develop woody stalks and at some point they need to be tidied up. I simply cut all the heads off plant root them and bin the old plant.  It helps to keep them fresh and gives me new plants for swaps. I managed to get three pots like this one, so not going to go short next year.

That type of tidying was more common with the lack of care, here is echeveria corrinea x echeveira rosea before

Another branching hybrid with really god hardiness and flowers.  I really must take better care of it as when well looked after it is stunning.

I decided to leave the top section as one, next year will be the year I finally look after it properly. Then it can take a place in the rockery looking like the plant it should be.

In other cases it is more about getting more plants.  I grew a set of ech. subrigida x ech. peacocki from seed a couple of years ago.  The plants grew into several forms and I have been trying to get more of my favourite forms.

I love the red edges to this form and it has a good pale blue/white colour. Having top cut it last year, the offsets are now big enough to be taken off.

I am getting better at not rushing removing offsets, I'll leave the others until next spring and decide then if I want to grow them as a clump or cut them up as well.

It doesn't always go according to plan.  This is echeveria 'rainbow',

I top cut it last year to encourage offsets, which it did, only not quite as planned.

Yes there are lots of offsets, but all have become almost totally white. Looking at them I can't see any that I think would survive in their own.  I guess this one is staying as it is, while we wait and see what happens next. Hopefully they will develop more green and stems so they can be removed.

White offsets seem to be a trend at the moment.  Here is one of my echeveria 'Compton Carousel', I took all the lower leaves of at the end of last year to encourage offsets.

I like to call these pure white plants "ghosts", with no chlorophyll they will not survive on their own as they can not feed themselves.  It will be interesting to see if they do better as they are growing as branches of a plant.  Normally I top cut the plant and let the offsets take over, this one has been left and instead the three largest normal offsets removed and potted up.

I have so far always resisted selling these, I get asked a lot. Instead all the offsets are used as swaps and presents for friends.  I mentioned in the last post how I dread people turning up to my house with plants.  Strangely I have never had anyone look upset when I turn up with one of these as a little present.

Sedeveria letizia is my favourite plant in the garden

Another little Crassulaceae is standing out for me this week.  Sedeveria letizia is a hybrid between sedum cuspidatum x echeveria setosa var. ciliatait, it is a small branching succulent that grows to around 20cm tall, with rosettes of around 5cm. The leaves are green with a red tinge depending on light levels.  In full sun, or when stressed, it is almost totally red, in shade the rosettes are totally green.

I have been trying it in different types of pots and now planted in the succulent rockery, I am interested to see how this one develops over the rest of the summer. Will it grow up or hang down?

The colour is great and it has already started to send out new branches from the base, which is one of the unusual things about this plant.  It doesn't tend to branch from higher up. The older stems can be quite long and skinny, but with new heads forming all the time, it stays nice and bushy.

One of the great things about the plant is that you can simply cut heads off and plant them up to give new plants.  If done at the start of spring, by the end of summer it will have started to branch.  This gives lots of opportunities to sculpt the plant. This is my main plant, sadly having been in the greenhouse it is green, but I love it anyway. Now things are more settled, it has been placed outside in the hope of getting some colour.

It flowers well, with multiple stalks per stem. The flower themselves are almost pure white (I told you I had a thing for white flowers) and like echeveria flowers they last a long time. For me it is usually in flower from April to June.

If you leave it long enough without cutting it up, it will form aerial roots. These can be left to grow, or removed, it doesn't seem to affect the plant either way.  It is possible to leave select roots and these slowly bulk up to give roots that will support the longer stems. 

Sadly it's not perfect, for a start it is not totally hardy.  Apparently it is hardy to -7C (20F) so far it has been fine in my unheated cold frames or greenhouse. It is borderline for my garden, so it will be interesting to see how the planted one copes this winter.  The other thing to be aware of, is it can get leggy if over-fed or grown in lower light levels.  I have fallen foul of this a few times (it is really very easy) and had to cut the plant up and start over again. 

So there you have sedeveria letizia, my favourite plant in the garden this week. Head over to Danger Garden to see Lorees and others selection.

The best of both: Sedevaria letizia

Hybrids are always an unknown entity, and when the parents are from two different families the outcome is even more uncertain.  Too often the result is the worst attributes of both so it is good to find plants that take the best attributes instead.

This sedum / echeveria hybrid, sedevaria letizia, must rank as one of my favourite plants: it ticks so many boxes.  It's a pretty plant and while it does form trunks these are easily controlled. It offsets nicely forming either small clusters, or nicely branched "trees". It flowers well, with almost pure white flowers. Finally it is cold tolerant and with rain protection gets through our winters without problems.







I have a few of these ready for planting out when there is a dry bed to put them in. The plant above is my favourite, I can't help but think it would make a spectacular bonsai plant. Wouldn't it look amazing clinging to the side of a rock, with its roots hanging down into the soil below. It does form aerial roots, which seem stable, so it should be possible. I just have to be brave enough to to risk the pant.