Replant Those Pots Around Your Yard and Pool with Succulents
Drought or no drought, it’s time to plant those empty plants with heat-wise and water-wise plants.
Consider succulents as a hardy long term solution. No more changing out color in containers every three to six months. They only require watering once or twice a week.
You mix succulents just like you would use flowering bedding plants. With flowers, you would have used a taller flowering plants like snapdragon in the center and then worked down by surrounding them with pansies and violas, then draping lobelia or alyssum over the edges.
With succulents, it’s all about foliage color and textures.
The same simple rules you used before with flowers still work with succulents. You have your Thrillers, Fillers and Spillers. Thrillers are the strong, usually upright, plant or accessory that you use in the center or back of your pot. In our flower example, this was the Snapdragon. The fillers come next, surrounding the thriller. In our flower example, these were the Pansies and Violas. Then there are the Spillers. These are plants that we use to soften the edge of the container and add an additional dimension. In our flower example, these were the Lobelias and Alyssums.
These same simple rules work just as well with your mixed succulent containers.
Your Thrillers could be something upright and airy like, Hesperaloe (Red Yucca), Aeonium ‘Zwartkop’ or Lady Slipper. The list of fillers are endless. These are the plants that fill most of our container. Showy plants like Echeveria ‘After glow’ (blue foliage), sedums in all foliage colors, Crassula ‘Campfire (red foliage), and Variagated Portulacaria. The Spillers could be Donkey Tail Sedum, Rat-tail Cactus, Cascading Portulacaria or any number of colorful Sedums.
Mix it up and have fun!
Come on in and let us show you the possibilities.