A couple months ago, I planted out a flower bed at the very entrance of our front yard with a number of succulents I thought would look quite nice once they’d grown and knit together.
That was back in July, and it’s September now, so I thought I’d do an update showing off this little space’s progress since I absolutely love seeing before-and-afters of plant arrangements, especially within the context of how long it took for the arrangement to progress.
Here’s the overlook (first picture before [July], second picture after [September]):
In terms of which plants I used, the list is as follows:
- Kalanchoe blossfeldiana (red, orange, purple, pink, & yellow varieties)
- Aeonium arboreum
- Crassula argentea hummel “Sunset Jade”
- Peperomia ferreyrae “Happy Bean”
- Rhipsalis baccifera
- Unknown aloe (Not sure what kind; it’s a red/brown then turns green when it’s completely unstressed I think? Pretty small and makes quite a large number of offshoots – any ideas with regards to identification?) [Edit 04/30/20: figured it out! It’s not even an aloe, but an aloe-haworthia hybrid named Alworthia ‘Black gem’].
Now for some close ups!
Before;
After;
Not very good at this yet, but I like how this bed turned out, especially for my first go at planting out a flower bed with succulents!
I really enjoy the way the kalanchoe blossfeldiana are growing and weaving into the aeonium arboreums I’ve got in. I think they’ll continue to grow nicely together, though only time will tell!
Those kalanchoes keep growing in weird and wonderful ways, each one a unique shape, and I love it. They bloom pretty much consistently, with some flowers dying off as others are just starting to open. I also adore how multi-layered they are, with new, green leaf growth at the top, but still having so many flowers coming through and blooming at the bottom. Love this plant so much more now that it doesn’t look box-standard neat-and-tidy like it did when I picked it up as a grocery store pot.
I keep removing heads off the aeoniums to propagate so I can place these stunners elsewhere in my garden. I started with three – all which I was given by a neighbour last November when we had gardeners come in to do some landscaping – and now I can’t even count how many I have rooted. Probably a dozen or so? All quite small, but they’ll grow into large beauties with time!
(Want to see more of this planter bed? I wrote up a rehab post about it months later here).
Leave a Reply