Succulent Garden with Wildflowers!

It’s been about two months since I planted my succulent garden and sprinkled wildflower seeds around it. The seeds have exploded with life, peacefully co-existing with the succulents. Over the next several weeks, more of these wildflower seedlings will be in flower, making for an even more dramatic display. I can’t wait!

Autumn Garden: A Season of Review

I just finished watering my front and back yards. The front looks fine, lawn is still green and my various bushes and plants are thriving. That’s the good news.
The bad news? My back yard had a combination of hits and misses.
The hits:  Most of my roses (primarily hybrid tea) are standing strong (a few perished), [...]

Succulent Garden Planted!

At long last, I planted my succulent garden this weekend. All of the plants that are in this succulent garden started their lives in containers, living there for a few years. They have now outgrown their containers and rather than getting even larger containers and repotting them, I opted to plant them directly into the [...]

Christmas Kalanchoe: Trio of Loveliness!

In one container, I have three Christmas kalanchoe in bloom: white and red, in the typical four-petal form, and the multi-petaled lighter red one (the blurry ones on the right), with layers of petals. Regarding the multi-petalled ones, when I got them from the store, each of the flowers looked like they were very tightly closed [...]

Succulents from Seeds: Follow-up

Many thanks to Julie, who blogs on http://www.asucculentlife.blogspot.com/ for recommending another on-line source for succulent seeds, Cactus & Succulent Society of America’s seed depot: http://shop.cssainc.org/seed-depot.html
As she noted to me, there are no photos of the plants themselves, and you will need to know the scientific names of the plants you want, not just the popular names, since the [...]

Succulents: From Seed!

As mentioned in my previous post, I will be installing a succulent garden in my backyard. It’s in its embryonic stage, but during my course of investigating ways to create such a garden without chopping up all of my existing succulents and to do it on the cheap, I found a website, based in Canada, [...]

Succulent: Fan Aloe!

Also known as Aloe plicatilis, this stunning succulent native of South Africa was gifted to me a few years ago, purchased at a yard sale! Apparently, I’ve got to go on the yard sale circuit myself if beauties like this can be found! Click on the image to see the absolutely gorgeous details! I am [...]

Succulent: Mother of Pearl or Ghost Plant, in Flower!

This certainly adds warm sunshine to any winter day! Rain is expected in my area tonight, but not before I snapped this photo of flower stalks blooming in one of my mother of pearl or ghost plants (also known as Graptopetalum paraguayense). This is a very striking and dramatic display – click on the photo [...]

Cymbidium Orchid: Flowering in Progress

It’s always a pleasure to see cymbidium orchids in flower. On one spike, flowers open up in a slightly staggered time frame. As  shown in the photo, taken minutes ago, the top center flower is almost fully open, while the other ones look like they’re about to burst out!
Notice the lovely cascade of wine-colored flowers [...]

Succulents: Easy Container Garden

I love easy-to-make container gardens, and one of the easiest is one of my succulent container gardens. Populated by cuttings and broken plant pieces from various gardening mishaps (!), this container garden has thrived and is one happy family consisting of the following, from left to right: (1) plush plant, also known as Echeveria harmsii [...]