hardy succulents

Don’t Miss the Stones latest show

Putting on a show this week in the garden are the Living Stones. No, not Mick, Keith, and Ronnie, but the horticultural Living Stones, Lithops aucampiae. Our oldest patch starts flowering in early to mid November each year, growing beautifully under an overhanging rock. For all the articles about how difficult they are to grow,

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Hey Bartender…Give me Another Shot of Winter

I had to chuckle as folks on several Facebook plant groups were wringing their hands in worry prior to the recent cold snap, while we were secretly hoping for even colder temperatures than forecast. JLBG registered three consecutive nights in the teens recently; 11F, 19F, and 19F. While this was certainly not abnormal for our

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If at first you don’t suceed, plant and plant again

One of my most lustful plants has been the super cute Euphorbia clavarioides var. truncata. I first ran into this fascinating poinsettia cousin at the Denver Botanic Gardens in the 1990s, and have subsequently killed it 5 times, prior to the construction of our crevice garden. Now, our specimen below is 2.5 years old and

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Cat Whiskers Cactus

Our planting of Glandulicactus wrightii is looking quite lovely as we head into fall. Sadly, few folks take time to closely examine the fascinating and intricate arrangements of cactus spines. Glandulicactus wrightii, which is native to Texas and adjacent Mexico has amazingly long, hooked spines that resemble cat whiskers. Long term winter hardiness is hopeful

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Are you a Stones Fan?

Just like the rock group of the same name, these fascinating living stones also look quite old and wrinkled. The genus Lithops are tiny succulent plants native to the deserts of South Africa. Despite virtually all references on-line, they make great garden plants…as long as you have a crevice garden, and grow them when they

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Crazy Eddie’s Dunce Cap

In our cold frames, some plants will occasionally flower out of season, and that’s the case this week when one of our Orostachys ‘Crazy Eddie’ plants decided to flower out of season…fall is it’s normal time. The offseason timing won’t adversely affect the plant, and it did give us an unexpected photo moment. Because of

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Raising Rabieas

We have long loved small crevice-sized succulents, but have also killed far more than our share, due mostly to our wet, cold winters. The newest star in our trials is the South African, Rabiea albipuncta, a first cousin to the better known, Delosperma. We should mention, that new DNA research has actually suggested a name

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Been Watching the Stones

We’ve tried growing living stones (Lithops) a few times over the last decade in the garden, but could never get them to last longer than a couple of years. We weren’t loosing them to cold temperatures, but to moisture. So, when we built the crevice garden, lithops were one of the first plants we wanted

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