Echeveria afterglow is my favourite plant in the garden this week.

There always seems to be at least one echeveria in the garden looking good.  This one has to be up there with the most luminous of the lot. 

The leaves are covered in a fine bloom, which gives the leaves a blue colour. Unlike some of the blue / white plants this one has a pink edge to the leaves and when sun catches the leaves the plant glows.

It is a really fast grower and forms rosettes of 30 - 50cm across.  I had been looking for this plant for a couple of years when I visited a friends house to find he was using them as bedding plants all around his garden.   It turns out he dug up two plants each autumn, potted them up and then cut the tops off. By spring each of the bases had formed 4 - 6 offsets, which he split and managed to grow to around 40cm by the end of the summer and starting again. After that I started doing the same and worrying a lot less about them and the plants dig much better.

It warrants favourite plant this week as it is flowering nicely.  For echeverias, e. afterglow has larger flowers which are covered in the same bloom as the leaves. 

Sadly it is right on the verge of being hardy for me, surviving down to -6C (20F), this really challenges it, so if we have a cold winter it dies. Kept dry though it has coped with -9C without too many problems.  Being such a quick grower, if if does get damaged new growth soon replaces the old leaves. 

So there you have echeveria afterglow my favourite plant in the garden this week. Head over Danger Garden to see what others have selected.