Garden Madness - the Succulent Story!!

When we moved into our new house, just before Easter 2005, we didn't really have a garden. Out the front was a planted area, with a few little shrubby things, which were eventually to grow to be large shrubby things, which we then pulled out, but we had no nice flowers or plants of note. We did manage to plant some roses and other things in a strip along the driveway, but that was about it.

At the back of the house was a paved area, which we dignify by calling it a patio, and an area of grass which we like to call a lawn.

We pondered over what kind of plants might suit us, and one day we discovered the answer almost entirely by accident: Succulents!!!

Succulents are a large range of plants which usually thrive in arid areas, and the class also includes Cacti, although we were not so keen on the prickly cousins of the standard succulent.

Very rapidly we found ourselves obsessed, buying succulents wherever we went, and stashing their little (and not-so-little) plantpots on our patio. We were forever discovering new varieties, new colours, and new places to buy.

My wife and her mother could not be trusted near a garden centre, and we even found a market stall selling plants in the hospital, when we went to visit or collect mother in law on one of here occasional admissions.

Once the madness had completely gripped us, we found our best supplier, at Coromandel Cacti.

Succulents tend to grow rapidly, and I found it very therapeutic to sit outside on fine days, re-potting plants into larger (and yet larger) pots.

The great attraction of succulents is their variety. Along with the basic types like Sedums, Echevarias, Sempervivums, Aloes and Agaves comes sub-types with amazing differences in form and colour. Not only are the plants nice to look at in their varieties, but when they flower another dimension appears.

These Lithops *rock plants*, from South Africa, produce large and delicate daisy-like flowers

This fine yellow ground-cover plant has very intricate and delicate flowers which seem to appear suddenly, and from nowhere.

These purple flowers belong to a rapidly spreading ground cover plant, and track the sun across the sky until late afternoon, when they close up for the night. And the red and yellow flowers in the second picture look like little aliens, seen from ground level, looking upwards.


The little white flower head on the left is only about 2 cm high, and is the flower of the *String of Pearls*, which can be seen behind. This makes a good hanging plant, and it looks like chains of green peas threaded onto string. The garden plot in the right hand picture is my pride and joy, and shows the pinnacle of my gardening ability to date. It improved a lot once we filled in the vacant spaces and other plants grew larger, which discouraged our two cats.

This picture shows the extent of the planting project that faces us over Christmas. Here are all the plants we have acquired, potted and repotted over the last year, and waiting for the front garden to be prepared and ready to recieve them.

Hopefully we'll have some nice pictures to show in the early new year - stay tuned.....