How beautiful to plant succulents. DIY mini garden of succulents. Wall panels and paintings
A neat and original composition of cacti and succulents will become a real decoration of the room. The plants that make it up, as a rule, are already unusual and decorative in themselves. When planted together in the original bowl or vessel, the effect is enhanced many times over. To make such a composition is within the power of everyone and everyone, the main thing is to show a little patience, imagination and allocate time for preparation and landing. We will tell you what to look for, which plants to choose, how to arrange them, and how to keep your mini garden in good shape.
Proper utensils
One of the main advantages of the selected plants is a small root system and low growth rate. This allows you to create spectacular small compositions of succulents with your own hands, which will not take up too much room space. Wide and low bowls, which can be in several tiers, with decorative elements, are best suited for these purposes. In terms of color, preference should be given to neutral shades that will not visually distract from plants, but only emphasize bright greens. Remember one rule: the height of the bowl should be about 1/3 of the entire composition. The material of the dishes can be anything: plastic, ceramics, glass and even wood, but always with a drainage layer and holes at the bottom to drain excess moisture when watering.
Use decorative powder
It is not only beautiful, but also benefits plants. Since the composition of succulents and cacti is located in a small container, moisture evaporates faster, the roots may be exposed. Powdering with fine stone chips, glass decorative elements, small expanded clay, etc., these processes will slow down and protect the root system from overheating. The latter is likely due to the fact that such mini-gardens require direct sunlight, the only way they will maintain maximum decorativeness and not stretch, not turn pale.
Choose your cacti and succulents carefully
A master class is the best thing that can help you in this matter. Especially if you had no previous experience with plants, their taxonomy. Seek help from specialists, study thematic literature, as the modern variety is very large. Of the general recommendations, it should be noted that plants should be selected as similar as possible in terms of care (watering, transplanting, growth rate, lighting, etc.). The neighborhood of cacti and succulents in this respect is not entirely true, but it looks impressive. To somehow neutralize the imbalance, choose the most hardy species: mammillaria, rebutia, echinopsis.
The composition of succulents and cacti of the same genus looks very nice. They are in harmony and unity, but meanwhile differ from each other in shape, color. For example, lithops, or living stones. hoof-like, grow very slowly, so you do not have to repot them for a long time.
Don't go overboard with variety. In a low pot with a diameter of 15-20 cm, it is best to plant 5-7 species, no more. Otherwise, the composition will be overloaded, and the plants will develop in tight quarters.
Place accents
A mini-garden, in which each plant "screams" about its uniqueness, brightness and unusualness, looks strange. Let them all be amazing, but only a few types should come to the fore, and the rest should harmoniously emphasize them. If your composition is made of succulents, then bring a tree-like plant into the background, for example, crassula, euphorbia, slipway, columnar cacti. The middle tier should be somewhat lower, and the lower one can generally be made up of ground cover species, which will gradually hang over the edge effectively (it is worth thinking about a pot on a leg in the shape of a glass).
Timely care is half the success
Once the selected plants are planted in the right order, the question arises of how to maintain this unique mini-garden. In fact, there is nothing complicated, and the care process consists of several main points. Firstly, the removal of excess growth, which begins to interfere with neighboring plants and spoils the decorative effect. If the arrangement of succulents is done correctly, then the need for a transplant will not arise for at least 2 years. Second, watering. It should be regular (in the case of cacti, do not forget about the dormant period in winter) and neat. Direct the jet of water at the largest leaves or stones so that it gradually reaches the soil surface. You can use a drip system. To remove excess moisture, there should be drainage holes and a pallet.
The best views for creating a mini-garden
Before you make a composition of succulents yourself, we recommend that you pay attention to the plants listed below. This selection of the most interesting succulents in terms of decorativeness and ease of care:
- Crassula, or Crassula, is a beautiful plant with fleshy, leathery leaves. It grows quite slowly, care is minimal.
- Aloe - a home "healer", known to everyone, can also be useful in landscaping. Spectacular elongated dense leaves with thorns will decorate any composition.
- Echeveria is a rosette plant that forms a green rose from small leaves. The hue ranges from rich emerald to bluish or lilac. In room conditions, it can bloom unusually and brightly.
- Stonecrop is a succulent with drooping shoots that forms dense green cushions in the open field, and in a pot culture it will elegantly emphasize cacti and lithops. The shades are very varied.
- Stapelia will delight not only with spectacular, but also with large star-shaped flowers up to 5-7 cm in diameter.
It is believed that lovers of indoor flowers, whose windows face the sunny side, are lucky. Their pets will not suffer from a lack of light, so choosing a plant to your taste is much easier.
But this medal also has a flip side.
In summer, sunny windows let in too much heat, the earth in pots dries up quickly, and if you do not water on time, then the plants will not last long and lose.
Such a danger often lies in wait for summer residents who leave the city for the weekend, leaving plants unattended for 2-3 days. Watering for the future does not always save, especially since it is not useful for all crops.
What is the way out?
Assortment of plants for a mini-garden at home
One of the most suitable for such conditions, besides hardy and beautiful, are various succulent species: crassula, stonecrop, echeveria, aeonium, spurge, sansevieria, aloe and many others, including epiphytic and terrestrial cacti.
They can be grown in pots, as we usually do with indoor plants, but, in my opinion, they look much more interesting in combination with each other, planted in a common container.
These plants are simply created for compositions (mini-gardens), their appearance, shape and color of leaves, type of growth are so diverse. There are upright, creeping, ground cover rosettes between them. And more importantly, many are miniature and slowly growing species, so the created compositions retain their proportions for a long time.
Care for succulents at home
There are several important rules that are not at all difficult to follow when planting and caring for succulents:
- for planting plants, preference should be given to wide low pots, it is possible without drainage holes;
- minimal watering is required (in winter - very rare, in summer, depending on the weather, 1-3 times a week);
- sunlight is welcome;
- the substrate should not consist of peat alone, it is necessary to add soddy soil to it (it is possible with a significant proportion of clay) and sand.
Still attractive in succulents is their ability to easily take root by cuttings. This quality is very useful when planting tightly in a composition: it is not necessary to have mature plants with roots that are difficult to fit in a small container - small parts of shoots or small rosettes are enough. Even the cut tops of cacti, after preliminary preparation, take root well in the substrate, not to mention the children separated from the bush.
But here, too, there are little tricks that will save the planted cuttings from trouble.
Firstly, cut off, and more often plucked off parts of the shoots before planting, should be kept in the air for 2-3 hours for small specimens and 1-3 days for large plants with a large cut area (euphorbia, cacti).
The milky juice released on the cut of milkweeds is immediately washed off with water and then the cuttings are left to dry. During this time, the sections are tightened with a crust, which will prevent the cutting from rotting after planting in the ground.
The second important point is watering the planted cuttings. It's better to put it off
2-3 days, and sometimes more if the weather is wet and rainy and the sun hardly shows up. It is best to pre-moisten the substrate prepared for planting slightly (but so that it does not stick together into a lump when squeezed in your hand). Here you need to follow the principle: it is better to dry than to pour.
Containers for succulent compositions
The best containers for succulent compositions are ceramic wide bowls of various shapes.
On sale you can find low pots specially designed for such plants, but other ceramic dishes up to food salad bowls are quite suitable. Very beautiful compositions are obtained in bonsai - special containers for growing bonsai-style dwarf trees.
The main principle of selecting plants for composition is the diversity of their appearance. Otherwise, everyone can rely on their own taste.
The final touch, which will give the composition a finished look, will be gravel bedding on the surface of the substrate.
With proper care and maintenance, a succulent garden can exist for more than one year. If you need to replace any plant in it, this can be done with minimal labor. The old plant is simply cut out of the soil, a fresh substrate is poured into the hole and a new plant is planted in the form of a cutting.
Do-it-yourself mini-garden at home: photo
- With such small scoops it is convenient to pour the substrate between the planted plants. A brush is useful when you need to sweep away particles of earth or gravel that have fallen on plants during planting.
- In a small bowl (about 10 cm in diameter), you should not plant more than 3 plants.
- Landing bowls can be very diverse both in size and shape, and in material, but it is better to focus on clay products. Compositions can be supplemented with large stones ...
- ...or shells.
- This composition with echeveria, crassula and gasteria is dominated by a cactus with bright, as if burning thorns.
- In summer, the compositions feel great on a sunny glazed balcony. Here they can stay until the onset of stable cool weather. You just need to reduce watering. But if autumn is cold, rainy, and the sky is constantly covered with clouds, it is better to bring succulent compositions into the room.
Below are other entries on the topic "Cottage and garden - with your own hands"
To create a mini-garden from different plants in one dish - this idea has matured with me since the year before last. I even started to grow some plants in advance for this idea. I settled on succulents: they are very hardy.
The composition was named "Alpine Hill" .
In it, I combined a rooted layer of a fat woman and a plant that is traditionally used for rock gardens. This is a perennial succulent. It has many folk names, but I know three: young, tenacious and stone rose. I like the last “name”: it is both beautiful and very accurate.
In fact, the stone rose grew in a small bowl, because it does not like a lot of land and frequent watering, but prefers to bask in the sun. But it also tolerates cold weather. The only thing that can die from is overflow, and it is almost impossible to dry it.
And the cold is not a hindrance for her either - she winters beautifully in the garden and pleases in the spring, first appearing green and strong from under the snow - a sort of persistent undying soldier. Moreover, it should be noted that I live in the Urals, and we have very severe winters. Probably, for this quality they called it “young” - a stone rose is forever young!
Moreover, in the flower garden the youth blooms beautifully.
And despite the fact that this is not a houseplant, it may well live and grow in a room for up to three years. And even raise kids. But flowering from it without a cold wintering and bright sun can not wait here.
Young people are different. I also have this form. Larger outlets. And another bloom.
It is still necessary to fertilize young in a pot, although in a flower garden it can do without top dressing. I feed fertilizer for succulents. Or you can periodically replace the earth with fresh.
How the composition was created
The crockery for the composition was a tray from a large glazed ceramic pot.
I drilled a drainage hole in it with a drill - and a “bonsai” 3 cm high is ready.
Inside the recess, I poured fine gravel to the very edge, sprinkled it with sand, and laid out larger pebbles around the perimeter - it turned out to be an artificial extension of the bonsai tree. She laid a layer of earth on top. It was undemanding to the soil, and the fat girl prefers a mixture for succulents - she did so.
And on this elevation to plant three grown stone roses with children.
The plants are already old enough, since they have given birth to children, and a clod of earth is braided with roots.
The fat woman also belongs to succulents and gets along wonderfully with a stone rose, which is comfortably located at its foot. Both plants grow slowly, love the same conditions of maintenance and care.
In the evening under artificial lighting.
This photo clearly shows the size of the recess in the bonsai.
While it is warm outside, the mini-garden lives on an open balcony. Closer to winter I will bring it into the room on a cool windowsill. I'm going to look for even more beautiful pebbles for this composition, otherwise I put gravel. I remembered the words from the song "I blinded you from what was ..." :-)
Over the summer, the "kids" have grown noticeably - now the land is almost invisible, And the fat girl has grown up.
I had no doubts that these two types of plants would get along together.
To be honest, I didn’t come up with anything new for myself, except that there is a hill of open land here, like in bonsai. But in general, these two species have been growing with me for a long time, only in the first case I planted the children of a stone rose with an adult fat woman, and here it’s the other way around.
The idea of creating a succulent garden in one bowl is not my know-how. There are so many beautiful examples and inspiring photos on the Internet that sooner or later many people want to try their hand at the art of creating compositions. And when you get to the pages of shops or collectors selling succulents and cacti, your eyes run wide.
Before I got the idea to combine the plants, I had a couple of cacti grown from seeds a few years ago, three sprouted seeds of Albuca spiral (which kept trying to leave me) and a medium-sized Fat woman lived in my house. One of the goals of creating a garden was the need to compact these pots and glasses, which for some reason occupied half the windowsill. Is 1 large pot better than 5 small ones?
Then I bought more various succulents, whose names I can’t pronounce now, but I don’t even remember. I had no logic in the selection of plants. I couldn't get my head around whether the needs for water and bright sun are the same for all my plants, or if someone will have a hard time in this neighborhood.
Thinking about the bowl project, I immediately decided that I did not want to make it one-level. I wanted at least some relief. Moreover, succulents and cacti do not need frequent transplants, which means you need to immediately decide on the shape of the future garden.
At first I wanted to repeat ideas from photos found on the Internet. They took a large ceramic pot and broke it. Then, from the fragments, a semblance of levels was built.
Looks amazing! But the price of pots of this size stopped me. Yes, and the successful outcome of splitting the pot is difficult to guess. Plus, I didn't know much about succulent maintenance, and my experiment had every chance of failing. Why risk a large sum of money in vain?
Therefore, it was decided to limit the budget option.
At home, there was an empty wide brown pot, and another pot of the same design, but much smaller in size. To create a small relief, I simply poured earth into a large pot. Then she drowned a smaller pot in this earth, but not in the center, but as if touching the circumference of the larger pot.
I hope the photo makes it clearer what I mean.
The plants were planted randomly, trying to evenly cover the soil area. This was my mistake. But the error is more likely in ignorance of the species of these plants than the error of agricultural technology.
Now I know that it would be better to plant Rowley's ragwort with the prospect of hanging from the edge of the pot, and it would be better to transfer the fat women to the upper platform. And the plant that is in front of the cactus on the lower platform - Crassula pellusida ssp morginalis, did not need to be included in the composition at all.
In the photo above - the initial version of the landing, just placed everyone.
In the photo below - I added pebbles, covering the black earth. Still, green plants look much more harmonious on a light background that imitates desert sand. All are well rooted and started to grow.
In the summer, I took the bowl out onto the balcony under the uncovered bright sun, to the south. Aloe and crassula began to grow rapidly. She had to be removed from the pot, as she began to clog the growth of her neighbors.
The cactus on the top platform gave rise and turned into a whole bush of cacti.
While summer is in full swing, with every watering, I fed this garden with fertilizer for cacti and succulents. And they grew like crazy! I wondered why my pet cactus babies were unloved for so long? After all, they are so grateful for the care!
The choice of succulents in our stores is very trivial - several types of cacti, a couple of huge echiverias that will not fit in my bowl, and fat women. At a city festival, I accidentally stumbled upon a treasure tent - collectors from another city brought a whole sea of \u200b\u200bdifferent succulents! This is where the soul could roam. I wanted to take everything and a lot.
But I limited myself to the following:
I didn’t add them to the composition in the summer, so as not to disrupt the growth of those who already live there.
So far, I am collecting material for the upcoming alteration of the succulent garden, because during the cultivation it became clear by experience that some of the plants need to be moved to the upper platform in the background, and some need to be moved down. This is due to the growth rate of a particular plant, its potential and direction of growth. Those who stretch upwards look more successful in the background as the basis of the composition. Those who seek to grow in breadth will fit on the lower balcony.
These exotics from the bottom photo are also waiting in the wings.
Now the bowl is hibernating, not without losses.
For some reason, my mother and grandmother decided that the flowers were very thirsty and began to water them every other day. I did not see and practically lost several especially beautiful specimens: the succulents from the lower platform almost died. But I have a few leaves left, so I hope to restore them in the summer, when the length of the day and the air temperature are most favorable.
I apologize that my story was not particularly informative in terms of the names of species and varieties. But I hope it was interesting to read about the process of forming a succulent garden from the inception of an idea to its implementation.
I found only 1 part of my order for succulents, which means that in the original bowl they were used, in addition to other unknown beauties:
- Eheveria Elegance
- Pachyphytum compactum
- Crassula pellusida ssp morginalis
- Crassula atra Monglow
- Senecio Rowleanus
- Crassula perforata variegata
- Haworthia ohlsonii x cooperi
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