Succulents and cactuses By Melissa Davidson Don’t overlook enticing Echeveria in creating your succulent display. Photo: Echeveria ‘Blue Curls’.


Succulents are vastly overlooked as a possibility in the garden and in garden design and yet containers full of succulents project the height of sophistication that strikes a sympathetic note with today’s spare interior design lines.


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ucculents are plants that store water in their leaves and stems to help them adapt to arid conditions. They often


have waxy coatings, and hairy leaves and stems. Sometimes, they are spiny. These are all devices designed to conserve moisture. The hairs, for example, modify the climate directly next to the stem or leaf, preserving humidity and regulating temperature. Some of these plants, the jade plant


would be an example, even go so far as to keep their stomata, the breathing appara- tus found on the underside of the leaves on most plants, closed during the day to avoid transpiration. They open at night to col- lect carbon dioxide, which they use during the day to photosynthesize. These plants also generally have shallow roots that grow close to the surface of the soil in order to capture every slight bit of moisture, from


18 • Summer 2012


the lightest shower to heavy dew. Succulents are vastly overlooked as a pos-


sibility in the garden and in garden design and yet containers full of succulents project the height of sophistication that strikes a sympathetic note with today’s spare inte- rior design lines. Outdoors, too, we tend to ignore the op-


tions succulents offer us. We plant sedums but we don’t use them as features in our garden design. Many of us never consider isolating our shiny leafed bergenia in a container and surrounding it with some other smaller but equally attractive fleshy plants, such as a saxifrage, sempervivums or sedum. The combination possibilities are endless:


a row of sempervivums (hens and chicks) in a low trough, a mosaic of semperviviums and sedums in a square container, a brightly


When a succulent flowers, we say it “bolts”, just like herbs and vegetables.


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