Succulent Designs... Fun with unusual containers!

Succulents just lend themselves to unusual containers with their many colors and textures. From hearts to beads to unfurling blue leaves, they’re fascinating plants! A recent trip to a Healdsburg antique store, Shoffeitt’s, yielded a cool glass container and a wonderful old sifter. ( I actually have an identical sifter but it was my grandmother’s and I don’t want to risk rusting hers since its a special keepsake from our cookie making days!) Now I can add the two to a nice square clay dish I bought with the succulents and have a planting party!

My first step was to photograph the plants I bought from Succulent Gardens so I’ll remember what they are when they’re planted! I always date the back of the tags for future reference. It’s fun to see how much they grow and how long it takes.

In the square clay planter window screen goes over the hole to keep soil in and let excess water out.

After moistening the soil and adding it to the container, I arranged the plants, some of which I took apart to have more pieces to plant….gotta stretch those little cuties!

Adding a rock or other accent is always fun..(the heart shape rock I used came from a collection of heart shaped rocks my son picked up for me….let’s see…almost 20 years ago on a family camping trip –  me sentimental…no way!)

Planting the little “mason jar topped candlestick holder” started with some aquarium gravel in the bottom to provide somewhere for accidental over watering to go.

Taking off some of the dirt from the roots of your selected plants is necessary when planting a small container…Sometimes you can cut a small piece of a plant away from a big plant to use in a mini planting…

And, if you have a large established plant, like this string of hearts, you can take a cutting and stick it in too!

In a small planter like this the plants will outgrow their container after a while, but you can just transplant them to another container and start over with a new design!

For the old sifter I planted a small pot of “Pork & Beans”  sedum over a thin bed of gravel to help keep the soil in the “pot”. They’re so pretty they can stand on their own and when they spread they’ll fill the top nicely.  Eventually the wire sifter will rust out but, again….just transplant and start a new design!

I don’t know about you,but I find planting almost anything that grows a very relaxing experience! After photographing 240 kids in 6 hours , (school picture day) planting these little containers was just the ticket!

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