Step by Step Succulent Bed

Hi it's Laura Eubanks of Design for Serenity and this is your succulent tip of the day. And I am here at that gorgeous property in La Jolla installing pots in the backyard and we're doing two little flanking flower beds with tapestry. So I thought I would take the time to walk you through this tapestry process. Now first of all we pulled out the undesirable landscape. Fran what was here? What was here? Seven years ago. Seven years ago we had and we had shrubs little just nothing burgers in here right just wasn't really making a statement. So those plants got re-homed. Fran's gardener took them away and I brought in some soil. Now you know I've always told you that it doesn't matter what kind of soil you you use as long as it drains well but this is pretty wet. So we went ahead and brought in some cactus and succulent specific mix to you know look at all the perlite in that. You know this is going to provide air and circulation for these plants and again this is La Jolla so it doesn't really matter. I mean we can literally grow rocks here. This is the the ground zero microclimate for succulent plants. So I brought in probably added about eight cubic foot bags of soil in here to create a little movement. We wanted to make a little mound remember how I tell you never plant on a flat surface. Then I staged some mini boulders. Remember I always scale scale scale scale and this is a small installation so we didn't want to do anything too overpowering. We also pull the color out of these flagstones that are in the hardscape. These beautiful beautiful tones we pulled those in to the rocks that we chose as well. Now you'll notice that behind me is a pillar so I want to plant something. I want to start my tapestry with something high here. So I chose aeonium. We're going to do a sunburst and we're going to do a zircon and we're going to plant those against the wall to add some height. Another thing too oftentimes when you're working in front of a wall hear that you run across footings. Doesn't matter with succulents. What is my rule? If your succulent stands up you've done your job. See I want to distress the root ball too because I want to pack these plants in very close together. So by severing a lot of the root and pushing off a lot of the soil it allows me to pack this plant right up tight against the sunburst. All right so we've got our first foundation planting done. Now we need our second foundation plant. What are we going to do? What's going to steal the show in this area of the garden? And I chose this beautiful Echeveria Sahara from Waterwise Botanicals. Now I want to anchor in a third plant element because I like to work in ones threes and fives and once I establish my core or my foundation plants the design speaks to me. It starts to open up. It starts to take on a personality and I know where I'm going to head next. Remember I don't draw and I don't work off of any kind of blueprint or rendering. I make it up as I go and I bet a lot of you do too. This beautiful Tanzanian zipper plant is my choice for my third element. This is pretty much a full sun installation but remember I'm coastal so I can get away with this. If you are in a zone that gets very, very, very hot in the summer this plant would probably be better suited to a little protection in the afternoon. Remember no straight lines in nature so I do not want to plant my plants straight. I want to there to be some movement so I'm going to put this guy over here closer to the sidewalk because I know that he's not going to get tall. Now literally the rest of my design is going to be just filling in the gaps. Okay now you can see that we're finishing up with the with the top dressing rock. Say hi to Viv. Hey guys. Say hi to Bill. This is where it gets artsy fartsy. You know the weight of the top dressing, where to take it, where to leave it off and this is where you have to be subjective and you have to just let the artist in you come out. There's no formula for this. Now one thing that I wanted to show you is see how I ran this little black pebble all the way down that side. See how I ran the the rubble that curled it here. I didn't take it all the way down because when I I feel like if I took it all the way down that this arrangement would look very boxed in and I don't want that. I want it to look very free form and natural. So I brought the ribbon around right here and curled it up but it's a little unbalanced still because there's no black pebble on this side but again I want to resist the temptation to box in the arrangement. So I'm just going to take the black pebble right to here. I'm not going to do any down there at all. Watch the magic. And this is where you can find an outlet for your OCD. Picking up all these little pebbles and pushing them right back up in a perfect little line. How fun is this? Oh it's so rewarding. Honestly I could do this all day. Just play with pebbles. Okay now how pretty is that? How balanced? You know those of us succulent enthusiasts that do design work, we basically paint with plants don't we? And the rock really finishes it. This is a little piece of living art. It is on a subterranean drip irrigation. It'll get watered about once a week to maintain the other perennials that the client has in the garden. And the succulents don't mind. They don't need to be watered once a week but they don't mind. Again as long as the soil drains well they will tolerate some water. Now I'd like to take you on a little tour of the backyard. We worked on some pots back here this California with your succulent tip of the day. Peace out!