June 2005 © Janet Davis
If you’re a little absent-minded when it comes to watering your pots, there are plants out there especially for you. And if you’d rather be golfing than gardening, there are plants for you as well. And if I say “deadhead” and you say “Jerry Garcia” -- don’t worry, there are no-brainer plants for your containers too.
They’re called succulents. And in the fickle world of horticulture, they’ve recently become rather trendy for their textural beauty and ease of care.
Botanically, the term succulent describes a plant native to an arid
or semi-arid region which has adapted to periods of low rainfall or drought by
storing water in its fleshy tissues.
Succulent cacti, aloes and
echeverias that grow in hot, dry deserts must carefully preserve the little rain
that falls in order to carry out their metabolic processes long after the ground
is parched. And it stands to reason
that if they can do it in the Sonora or Sahara, they can do it on your sundeck
or balcony too.
The master of succulent potscaping is Vancouver’s Tom Hobbs. The owner of hip Southlands Nursery and a fun, opinionated horticulturist, he has a standing love affair with tender succulents, which he calls “the epicentre of a new botanical quake of creativity”. In his fabulous, must-have book The Jewel Box Garden (Raincoast Books 2004), he devotes an entire chapter to “Echeveria Pizzas” – so-called because he uses all kinds and colours of the Mexican natives in very shallow clay saucers, often mixed with other succulents (multi-topping pizzas), to create flat, textural “landscapes-in-a-dish”. When he has the dish crammed, he mulches in between the plants with a soft-brown gravel that unifies the design. The idea here is to appreciate the amazing foliage, rather than lust after blossoms.
Small succulents look especially lovely in shallow, glazed dishes or clay bowls, but care must be taken to make sure they drain properly. Drill a hole in the bottom, if necessary. A strawberry pot also makes a great container for succulents. On my own deck, I fill two glazed Mexican wall planters with echeverias and hang them on an inaccessible lattice screen where I aim the hose at them once in a while, if I remember.
Here are a handful of succulents to try in your own creations. They can often be found in the houseplant section of nurseries and big-box stores. Soil for these plants should be a gritty, porous mix, since they cannot tolerate wet feet. You can buy a special potting soil designed for cacti and succulents, but if you’re making your own, try 1 part crushed gravel and/or coarse sand to 2 parts regular potting soil. Grow them in full sunlight, water sparingly (every few days in really hot weather) and fertilize them once a month. The first two are frost-tender and should either be discarded in fall or brought indoors and overwintered in a very bright window or placed under grow lights.
Burro’s Tail (Sedum morganianum) Tender Burro’s tail is a
good addition to the outside of a succulent dish, where its long celadon-green
stems will cascade over the edge.
Echeveria:
(Echeveria) With
their charming little rosettes of foliage and delicate orange or pink flowers,
echeverias are must-haves for succulent containers. Look for new cultivars with frilly or
textured leaves and leaf colours that range from chartreuse to deep grey to
near-black.
Hens-and-Chicks (Sempervivum): These little hardy succulents have the same rosette leaf form as echeverias and can be substituted for them if necessary. They are now available in a range of colours, including burgundy and brown.
Once you’ve created your first succulent pizza, you’ll want to make more with new toppings, like aeonium, senecio, haworthia, kalanchoe and crassula. Then you’ll know you’re hooked.
Adapted from a column that appeared in the National Post