At last some planting

With the frame finished it was finally time to get on with some planting.  Having tried a few different designs on paper and looked at a few more pictures from the internet It seemed that having a few clumps of the same plant interwoven with something creeping would work for what I wanted.

So first in was sempervivum virgil (which if you do not own I highly recommend for its colour, quick offsetting and not dieing back too much over winter). Then an agave parryi cream spike, as a bit of a focal point. 

 

I was very good and even managed to leave the pup in place, so we shall see what happens to that as the plants settle in.

Next in were a couple of Xgraptosedum 'Mediterranean Mystery' which have pretty little flowers in spring,  and will hopefully snake out of the picture as they grow.  Between these, and this will be consistent through the whole thing, is a little compact saxifrage.

You can't see the variation in colour quite as well in the photos, but so far I am pleased with it. I'm still not sure I have enough plants and it may end up that the sempervivums get repeated to fill up any remaining space, but it is good to actually get the planting underway. No doubt updates will take up the next few posts as I finish off the planting.

Wierd places to track down that elusive plant

I am always amazed by the lengths plants enthusiasts will go to to find plants.  It's not just the driving huge distances, or the amount of plants that get crammed into cars.  It's also the ingenuity that goes into always managing to fit at least one quick peak into a nursery or garden no matter where. This got me thinking about what was the most unusual place I have found plants.

For me it has to be on a stag do.

Yes I even managed to slip a bit of plant hunting into a stag do a couple years back. This one was in  Bournemouth for a spot of water-skiing and admittedly a lot of drinking. We were staying in this funny little hotel on the edge of town and as I was parking I spotted a couple of green houses tucked away at the back of the car park. Now my friends are not at all interested in plants, and even if they were, there are strict rules about behaviour and plant hunting is not exactly on the list. 

Having bided my time, I finally managed to find a point to sneak off and have a quick look around the green houses.  Not really expecting to find anything of interest I was surprised to find them full of succulents.  It got better when looking closely I started noticing a few less common ones. The owner came over to say hello and it turned out she was a keen succulent collector who spent half the year in warmer climates where most of her plants were, but she couldn't help but keep some in the UK.  It turned out many spares were for sale at 99p although some were more expensive at a whopping cost of £3. 

So I had a really good rummage around the pots,  the plant addicts here will know what I mean, when you search every single pot in the hope of finding that gem in among everything else. Sure enough I found a couple of aloes I had been after,  really decent sized plants and rare, so I didn't really expect her to sell them.  To my amazement she thought about it for a bit and then said OK as they would be going to a good home.  I had to try to control my grin at getting such bargains. 

So here is my little haul form that trip, I did buy a few others to go with the bargains:

The main plant was this aloe karasbergensis which is a form of a. striata.  You just don't find these in the UK so find one this size for £3 was great.

And as it was there I thought I might as well get the normal a. striata as well.

Sadly all subsequent stag weekends have been plant hunting free, and that is still the most unusual place / occasion I have found plants.  So what was yours?

Do you notice anything about this plant?

One of my favourite echeverias is e. minima.  It is a very compact little plant which tends to flower well in the middle of summer.  A few of mine are in the flower at the moment,  including this one:

As the name suggests it is never a big plant, and you can keep it small by restricting the roots.  It is a really good plant to play with if you want something unusual in a very small planting space.  I have been playing with it for a while and have quite a few different ones that I have been bonsai-ing over the last years.  This is one of the best so far, I spent ages trying to get a photo in focus but just couldn't get it right.  Hopefully you will forgive me when you see it along side the normal sized plant:

The bonsai plants on the right are the same age as the large plant on the left.  The only difference is that I planted three plants in the small pot and only one in the larger pot (which has now offset). One of the things I like about bonsai succulents is that you don't need to do anything different to grow or care for them.  I never had any luck with other types of bonsai, where you needed to regularly prune the plant and roots to force it to stay small (which is probably lucky as that is something else I could serious obsess about). With succulents you just plant them and then treat them as normal. Plus it helps that it only takes a couple of years for the plants to mature, instead of the decades for other forms.  It is bonsai for the inept.

I don't think the pot does it justice so I have to go in search of something nicer to plant them in. No doubt I will continue to see how much smaller I can get the next generation, I wonder how small I can get the flowers!

Recomend a sedum

There has been some progress on the living picture with the frame now ready to go.  I have made it in two sections, an inner box for the soil,  and an outer frame to look a bit nicer.

These were stained to match the wood that forms the actual front of the frame, and a wire mesh put across the front to hold the soil in.  This is it all ready to go.

 So the frame is done,  I have most of the plants ready,  but still looking for a few things to go in with the echeverias, sempervivums and a little agave utahensis.  I think the final design will be a reef so following up on a comment in the earlier post I thought a sedum or saxifrage may work for flow between the different plants.

I have mentioned before that a lot of my plants come about through people mentioning them or seeing them in other peoples gardens. I thought this may be a good way of finding a suitable plant for the picture. So get your thinking heads on. A bit of red would work well with the other plants,  probably smaller leaves to allow it to weave nicely between the plants (it is not a huge frame only 50 x 35cm).  It needs to spred by not in a way that will need too much pruning.

So any suggestions of a good sedum or something else you love that would fit? I can then have fun looking them up and who knows then trying to track them down.

A slight change in the weather

Having had a couple of warmer days, we had a change this afternoon with a huge thunder storm.  These are rare in London even more so with serious hail.  My OH happened to be at home at the time to catch it with the camera

The thing about hail is that after it finishes and you have got over the sound and stones, you start to worry about your plants.  A friend had a lot of his prized plants seriously marked in a similar storm last year.  Thankfully I got off easy; there are a few marks on the odd plant, but most are fine and there is no really noticeable damage.

Looking at the photo at first I thought that the blurs were rain on the window, but then realised my OH was standing outside at the time and they were actually the hail stones.  I also like the splash in the bottom right, which is even better blown up:

My OH has a knack for taking good photos.

A prince amoung aeoniums

Of all the succulents I have collected, aeoniums have been the most up and down.  Their peak was in 2009, at which time I owned 10 - 15 different varieties.  Sadly loses over winter showed how difficult they were to keep in the UK, needing above -3 to survive. So I have not been replacing them and anyone who shows interests in one of my plants often leaves with it. Going into last winter I had 4 left, two of which have since been given away, leaving me with my cristate a.suburst (which I posted about here) and a. nobile.

It was actually a.nobile that got me interested in aeoniums in the first place.  They are a little different to most of the varieties not really growing a stem but having huge very thick leaves. These leaves form much slower than other forms and get really big.  In time they develop huge heads, one of the biggest of the group.  They also change colour depending on water and light levels. Finally if you are lucky enough they will flower with the usual huge flowers that's one of the selling points for aeoniums.  Sadly they don't really offset or branch although if you are feeling very brave you can force offsets by cutting the top off.  But this is not for the faint hearted as unlike most form they are not easy and when a friend tried he got only two plants from the cut and said it wasn't worth the worry. To make up for it though they are easy from seed and so you need never be without as many plants as you have space for.

Personally I think they are one if not the best aeonium, well worth the pampering you have to give them over winter. This is one aeonium that is going to start in my collection, so hands off.

The perfect plant pot

Pots seem to be a common theme in things I read at the moment and searching for that perfect pot can be almost as hard as searching for the perfect plant. Most of the time the only decisions I make over pots are: plastic or terracotta, and full or half depth. I tend to automatically put all my agaves in unglazed terracotta pots to ensure they dry out quickly, limiting the amount of pot hunting I have to do. One of my favourites at the moment is this lovely little starter pot.

I don't know what it is about this one that I love, it just seems to have the perfect proportions and has been ideal for one of my bonsai experiments on echeveria minima. It came with a cutting from a friend and was so much better than the little take out coffee cups I was using for my seedlings.

Not all pots fit in the tasteful category and novelty pots are everywhere.  So far I have managed to mainly avoid them but I do have two that go with my African 'garden tat'. This one is the hippo and currently has an flowering echeveria john catlin on its back.

Moving swiftly on, the thing about the perfect pot, is finding a pot that works for the plant and in the location.  How often do you see something that looks amazing only to know it wouldn't work for you.  Pots more than anything need to fit in with the garden.  I have shown these painted pots before, I loved them this garden in Morocco, but they would never work for me.

One other thing about pots is that they don't have to be filled to be part of the garden. The friend that gave me the little pot has a great used pots pile.  She has the most amazing garden full of different sections with hidden bits, I will have to do a post on it at some point soon.  Last time I was there I took some photos of the behinds the scenes areas and one of those was this pots pile:

She is very embarrassed about it, sorry Mel, but I think it's great. Apart from looking good, I imagine it is an ideal wildlife refuge. Most of the pots are broken and are stored here until they are given a new life in a mosaic style wall somewhere in their garden.

I doubt having all my plants in fancy pots would make them more acceptable to my OH, so for now I do not need to expand my search for pots. No doubt I will continue to keep an eye out whenever I visit a nursery as you never know when you will find that perfect pot.