The hardy succulent garden: structure

Design is an important part of creating any garden, more so when trying to create a hardy succulent area.  I tend to do lots of drawings of the area, measure it up, work out how much sun it will get and finally plan the planting.

One key part of this is thinking about the planting medium and the physical structure. When it comes to growing succulents in the UK the mantra is "drainage, drainage, drainage".  It is not enough to simply add gravel to the soil, or even replace all the soil with gravel. There is a big difference between a gravel garden planted with local plants or alpines, and trying to grow succulents from much warmer areas. If you want a truly versatile dry bed then it has to be raised, either by building a wall around the whole thing or using a rockery. There are two reasons for this, the first being drainage.  Raising the bed above ground means that if the planting medium is free draining, any water will run straight through and out of the bottom.

The second advantage is that in raising the bed up you have an opportunity to introduce a heat sink.  These are increasingly being used in green house and even house design, but are not widely mentioned when it comes to the rest of the garden. I am sure most people recognise that a large rock on the surface will store heat during the day slowly releasing it over night. Multiply that up with a pile of rocks and you have a heat sink which may be the difference between life and death for some plants. In my current bed, I used all the dug up concrete to raise the levels and filled gaps with gravel This extra mass forms the base of my heat sink and I suspect maybe one reason I can plant some the plants in my dry bed.   The height and heat sink were increased further with a more sculptural top layer of large rocks, forming the pockets into which the plants where placed.

I am already considering options for my next garden, do I want brick or stone walls, railway sleepers, or perhaps build only the back wall and then slope the bed down to ground level at the front. Then what stones do I want to use? I like the river boulders I have in my current bed, but I have seen some amazing succulent beds using volcanic rocks and darker stones. Finally do I want to include any soil at all? My current front bed is almost pure gravel, but this slows growth down and having a way I can include soil in some location without it washing away would probably be helpful to some plants.

It's only once I get into the new garden and see the space; what shapes I want, and how the succulent bed will fit in with the rest of the space, that I will be able to finalise exactly which method I use. Whatever I end up doing, all the succulent beds will be raised to some degree and will make the most of heat sinks wherever possible.

I should give one warning though.  Should you ever come to move you had better hope that the next person wants a dry bed, other wise they are going to have to move all that material back out again!

The hardy succulent garden: Climate

What with digging up the dry bed allowing me to closely examine the plants and hoping the next house will have a larger garden, I have been thinking about the hardy succulent garden. With this in mind I thought I would do a series of posts on the topic. A lot of it will be in planing for the next garden; thinking how to build the beds, what to plant and what winter protection (if any) to use.

So what do I mean by a hardy succulent garden?  Firstly the majority of plants have to be planted all year, not just sunk and dug up before winter.  For me the plants will mainly fit into the groups of agaves, aloes, echeverias, yuccas, with a few other plants both as features and as fillers. Finally winter protection should be kept to a minimum and should be about keeping plants in pristine condition not about survival.

For this first post it seems sensible to look at my climate. Living on the edge of London my winters are not that bad, -10C (14F) would be my absolute minimum. Although we do get 2 - 3 snow events a year, they usually only last a day or so and it is very unusual for snow to stay around for a week. Sadly when this snow is wet and is prone to melt and re-freeze and this does more damage than the drier snow other areas of Europe gets. Perhaps as important are the summers, you can get away with a lot more if you have long hot summers.  Our summers are often neither of these and it can seem to rain as much in summer as in winter. While that is not the case, we do not get the extended hot periods that these plants would really like.

I'm not sure exactly how the series will pan out.  I'm thinking of a post on the planting material / bed structure. Then one on each group of plants and finally one on winter protection. I have no idea if it will be useful for me or others, but it will at least give me something to do until I can actually get on with the new garden.

And so it begins

With a constant stream of people coming through the house, I used a break in the viewings to start dismantling the dry bed.  The agave section is the first to go, this was it this morning.

I thought it was best to start with the smallest plants first and work up.  This lot came out in about 1 hour, being planted in almost pure gravel makes removing them really easy. There was one pup from each of the agave parryi, you can clearly see the difference in colour and shape now, they looked almost identical when planted.

The bed is already looking much emptier. I'll do the rest of the agaves, the filifera, nigra and montana next and then I will have all the space I need to take care as I dig out the yuccas.

Given how much time it took to design, build and plant up, not to mention the time I have spent protecting it and removing leaves, I have mixed feelings about the speed with which it is can be dismantled.

The ugly duckling

There once was a little echeveria hybrid who felt very unloved compared to the other hybrids.  It wasn't its fault it didn't turn out as pretty as the others, after all you can't choose your parents. For years it was considered a poor echeveria agavoides hybrid while the other hybrids were pampered, named and given pride of place. The only bit of attention it was given was to humiliate it in a post here highlighting how plain it was.  Come winter it was put storage, tucked away at the back, out of sight and out of mind.

Come spring waking up, it tentatively put out its first flower spike.  Quietly not wanting to attract attention it opened its first flower hidden among the other plants.

Then something amazing happened, it noticed that the flower was being photographed and assumed that again it was to be humiliated. But it wasn't

Slowly it built in confidence and put out more flowers and with each flower it got more attention.  No one seemed to be laughing, instead the comments were about how good it looked.

Finally it was able to take pride of place. Its flowers the best on display, not at all like the lack lustre flowers of its parents.

Gone are the plain leaves, the loose shape, replaced by thick, pale blue leaves a nice round rosette and those lovely large flowers.

The ugly duckling was ugly no more.

Shed in flower

Looks like you cannot fight nature and with all the sun and warm weather we had in March everything has come into flower early this year in the shed.  Given that most echeveria flowers are yellow, the flowers are not exactly a techni-colour display. That is before you add the plants themselves still in their winter colours. Put the two together and you do get a feast for your eyes.

I love the different shapes of the flower spikes; the branched, the straight and the shepherds crook. Some go a little mad at this time of year and will need a good hack back once the flowers are over.

Some are just delicate, the graptopetalums have some of the best flowers.

Wherever you look there are flowers weaving between the other plants.

There is so much in flower I have no chance of controlling crosses, so it is down to nature this year and we shall see what it can do.

Planting up the greenhouse

I felt it was time to plant up the greenhouse .  There were a few choices for plants, in the end I opted for a cute little cactus. 

Echeveria seedlings

After a recent comment asking about the echeveria agavoides 'ebony' seedlings I thought it was time for an update, especially given the growth. I potted up to of the e. subrigida x peacockii seedlings earlier in the year and you can see the difference that has made in their growth.  Who says that succulents don't respond to pampering.

First up was to pot up the remaining e. subrigida x peacockii seedlings.  There is still really good variation in the colour of these from plain green to a very pale blue / white. I hope this continues as I will then be able to select the best ones and pass the the rest off to friends (or the highest bidders). 

The e. agavoides 'ebony' have been much slower.  I find this is typical of the variety, they seem to take a long time to get to a certain size and then suddenly get going.  I would expect them to stay small this year and then properly put on good growth next summer. Although if we actually have a summer that may be different and they have got a good head-start now they are all planted up.

Both of these should be very collectable once they have grown a bit.  I am sure my OH will be looking at them think "a little bit of extra cash", I will probably look at them and think "swaps anyone"?