Another ceramic pot experiment

I am sure many of us are constantly on the look out for unusal plant pots for our succulents. Back in January, just happened to pop into a shop and found this one.

It really reminded me of a clump of sea anemones.

Back home and time to think what to plant in it. The planting holes are not large, and potting was going to be difficult. So slow growing and perhaps something that could just be planted and left to get on with it. Mulling over ideas my pot of deuterocohnia brevifolia came to mind. This little bromilaid, also known as Abromeitiella brevifolia f. chlorantha, forms nice mounds over time. My pot had put on a growth spurt over last summer and was looking good.

Wouldn't it be amazing to have each hole planted with these; over time they would envelop the pot forming a multitude of little mounds.  I considered splitting mine, but it was too perfect, so one project led to another and a second pot was purchases.

Doesn't it look good in its new home, It is bigger than it looks, the pot is 22cm.  

Now just the problem of finding another plant with enough heads to fill the 20 holes.  It took a while to track down a large enough plant, and it arrived yesterday.  It was straight down to seeing how many plants with roots it could be split into.

6 good plants straight away. A few more delicate splits, some with roots and some without, resulted in 14 plants.  Next job to decide which holes to fill.  I though it would look better initially to leave some empty, to allow watering and to give something different while the plants establish.

It took quite a few attempts to settle on this one. Then time to fill it, and the realisation that this was a really stupid idea. The holes were between 1 - 2cm and with a plant, many with root, getting soil in was going to be difficult.  How any times in succulent gardening do we use unusual tools.  Todays a teaspoon.

It took about 30 minutes to spoon the soil mix into the holes, shaking the whole thing to get it spred evening through the pot.  Another 15 minutes to top it up around the plants.   The the real fun started; how to get the gravel around the base of each plant.  I tried the teaspoon, my hand and finally resorted to a pair of tweezers and placing 2 or 3 small pieces of gravel at a time.  Yep 1.5 hours later and the pot was finished!

Should be fun as it fills out, initially forming individual mounds and then as these join together into one amorphous blob. It was a lot more work than expected, but should be worth it.