Succulents Australia: Inspiration and simple ideas for garden projects
When it comes to succulents, look at creative ways to use them and their potential soars. Find some inspiration for your next garden project.
THIS social distancing is proving a bonanza for my gardening.
Not only do I suddenly have time for long overlooked jobs such as clearing up weed-infested beds and repotting root-bound pot plants, I’m embarking on new projects.
I imagine many of you are doing the same.
Strangely, some of my new projects involve succulents. I say “strangely’’ because, as I have confessed here before, I once hated succulents with an intensity. Loathed them.
For me, succulents were like brussels sprouts, those detestable blobs your mum boiled in water until soggy.
With brussels sprouts, change came when I discovered that if prepared cleverly with garlic, onion, tomato and crispy bacon they became a gourmet delight.
It’s the same with succulents. Get over your initial prejudices and look at creative ways to use them, and their potential soars.
I have been setting up displays of rose-shaped echeverias in square terracotta pots, creating bowls of spoon-leaf shaped Senecio amanuensis with its intense, almost fluorescent pink edgings, and even turning the old metal base from an outdoor barbecue (bought for a few dollars from the local tip shop) into a massed display of different succulents.
Frankly I didn’t know I could be so creative. It’s exciting.
The beauty of succulents is they are cheap to buy and come in a mass of different shapes and extraordinary colours. Make a mistake in what you’re attempting and it’s no big deal.
Better yet, buy a few succulents and you can quickly propagate heaps more at no cost.
It’s often as easy as plucking off a leaf, tip or offset and whacking it in the ground to grow.
Among the easiest to propagate are echeverias.
One of the simplest is Echeveria glauca, often called “hen and chickens” because of its small offsets surrounding the parent plant.
It’s as easy as pulling away some of the rosette-shaped growths, or offsets, that appear around the plant itself.
Seek offsets with roots, and plant in soil or a pot of succulent or cacti potting mix. Many succulents also can be propagated from leaf cuttings.
Gently prise a few leaves from the parent plant, taking as much of the joint between leaf and parent plant as possible.
Set the leaves aside for a week so the tear heals and hardens, then place them upright in a tray of a cacti or succulent potting mix, with each leaf buried just enough so it stands up.
Place on a windowsill but not in direct heavy sunlight. Water lightly every few days, gradually increasing exposure to light.
Once plants have produced roots, usually after about six weeks, they are right to transplant.
An older succulent project I’m particularly proud of is a shadow box-style display of mini succulents I knocked together in a few hours.
Shadow boxes were popular in Victorian and Edwardian times and are merely shelved, open-fronted boxes or frames for hanging on a wall to display themed collections.
My shadow box display was created from a few length of leftover timber. I added seven tiny succulents, each one in an equally tiny terracotta pot bought on eBay, and hung it on a wall.
I’m not a fan of too much kitsch yet I reckon it came up a treat.
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK
DIG manure (decayed cow or sheep is perfect) into unused vegie beds.
PLANT lilium bulbs in a part sun/part shade spot for a summer show.
PLANT broad beans, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, mizuna, mustard greens, parsnip, peas, radish, silverbeet, spinach and turnip.
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