Outside-Inside Style: Succulent Container Trough

suc­cu­lents allow for an inter­est­ing mix of color and tex­ture for very lit­tle effort

I’ve actu­ally had a few peo­ple ask about my take on house­plants.  In gen­eral, I’m not a fan.  I know that’s sur­pris­ing for some­one who loves gar­den­ing but house­plants are rather like pets and require reg­u­lar feed­ing and main­te­nance.  I have PLENTY of things in my life requir­ing reg­u­lar feed­ing and main­te­nance– adding house­plant to the mix has tra­di­tion­ally been a bad idea.  I’ve tried it.  And failed.  Not so much because house­plants require a ton of work but rather they require sched­uled main­te­nance and I seem to for­get unless they are right in front of me.

My first attempt at grow­ing them started well enough.  I am par­tic­u­larly fond of  the feel­ing cre­ated by mix­ing suc­cu­lents in metal con­tain­ers and so I cre­ated a lovely zinc trough and filled it with fun plants.  And then pro­ceeded to place it in the exact WRONG loca­tion to ful­fill the cul­tural needs with the plants.  Moments like this are when I envy the non-living acces­sories inte­rior design­ers have to work with– sadly, plants are not some­thing you can stick in just the right spot and have it all work as you can with a vase or lamp.  I had hoped the plants would live hap­pily in the loca­tion because the vignette they cre­ated was exactly the look I was going for.  It worked okay for quite some­time but I made a few rookie errors in place­ment and con­tainer selec­tion that made this less suc­cess­ful long term.

Which brings up another ques­tion– what does “long-term” mean any­way in the con­text of house­plants?  Months? A year?  Longer?  If it’s a mat­ter of months or sea­sons, then this vignette suc­ceeded.  At a year old, it looked leggy but still okay. I didn’t know then that the stretched out growth wasn’t the ‘norm’ but rather indi­cated that they were suf­fer­ing from a lack of sun­light.  It’s not that I’m unaware that plants will stretch for sun­light when needed, just that these Mediter­ranean suc­cu­lents aren’t grow­ing out­side in these parts so it’s a bit chal­leng­ing to effec­tively grow plants you’ve never seen in their native habi­tat, I didn’t know what they were really SUPPOSED to look like!  By year two, it was a hot mess with only 1/2 the plants sur­viv­ing and the zinc con­tainer began to rot.  Metal fails to appre­ci­ate water sit­ting in it and this con­tainer had no drainage– a big no-no for suc­cu­lents.  I didn’t know that– THEN.  I felt guilty throw­ing the plants away.  Had I done a lit­tle more research– I would have learned that I could have made a bunch of fresh NEW plants from the leggy old granny plants!

Yes, I can totally see the dust on the rail­ing in this pic­ture. Eeww! It didn’t ‘show up’ when look­ing at it IRL but it’s totally there in the photo. I almost didn’t write this post because of it then decided “what the heck? it just gives cred­i­bil­ity to the “I’m too busy for fussy house­plants” assessment!

HOWEVER, thanks to the incred­i­ble Debra Bald­win and her books on suc­cu­lents, I decided to try again with suc­cu­lents and I’ve been hav­ing fun ever since.  Debra is the expert on this sub­ject and has devoted con­sid­er­able effort to pro­mot­ing these unique plants– LONG before they became trendy.  She is also incred­i­bly gen­er­ous and has agreed to answer some ques­tions for us on this blog later in the month– if you have any spe­cific ques­tions you’d like to have expert answers for, she’ll give bet­ter answers than I can.  If you have such a ques­tion, leave it in the com­ments for this post and I’ll add it to the list!

Gray-leaved Echev­e­ria ‘Topsy Turvy’ with yellow-hued Sedum in the fore­ground and a hardy Sem­per­vivum pro­vides the bur­gundy color in the background.

In any case, what I’ve learned since those first attempts is that suc­cu­lents are the PERFECT plants for busy peo­ple.  When we inter­view Debra, we’ll ask gen­eral ques­tions about cul­ture, prop­a­ga­tion and trou­bleshoot­ing for those of us who LACK the ideal cli­mate to grow most of the vari­eties out­side and must enjoy them indoors– through the win­ter at least!  Suc­cu­lents are inex­pen­sive and there is a fab­u­lous selec­tion avail­able at Lowe’s and Home Depot if you are patient and check back reg­u­larly, you can build a lovely col­lec­tion.  Many of my plants have come from Cac­tus & Trop­i­cals here in town– they have a gor­geous store and excel­lent selec­tion.  Prices on small plants are very com­pet­i­tive with other places.  When I need to buy these lit­tle crit­ters in bulk– I will trek up to J&J Nurs­ery in Lay­ton as their prices are sig­nif­i­cantly lower than the big box stores.  The down­side is that the indi­vid­ual species are NOT names but since that cuts the cost in half– it’s worth it for most projects.

Grap­tose­dum ‘Alpen­glow’ in the fore­ground and some unknown Cras­sula in the background

If I were to redo this exact project again, I would select a metal con­tainer that had a plas­tic liner– with drainage! I would water it by pulling the liner out of the metal trough, soak­ing it, allow it to drain and then replace it. I know that sounds like a lot of work but in a house­plant set­ting you’d only have to do it once every 2–3 weeks depend­ing on the time of year (less time between dur­ing active growth and more time while the plants are ‘dor­mant’). I would also have used a dif­fer­ent plant­ing medium than pot­ting soil with gravel in the bot­tom. The gravel was good but pot­ting soil which con­tains peat moss (and most of them do) should be avoided as the peat moss is hydropho­bic and cre­ates prob­lems. Instead, mix some fine gravel (decom­posed gran­ite or even the rock used for fish tanks), some orchid grow­ing soil which is mostly bark– remove the big pieces, and some coconut coir. I sup­pose a lit­tle suc­cu­lent pot­ting soil is not ter­ri­ble but I haven’t found one yet that doesn’t have peat moss in it.

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