Soft succulents for summer gardens

Clive Blazey introduces a child friendly, cool summer garden.

For survivability during oppressive 40°C days, most gardeners used to rely on planting either spiky cactus or tall aloes that seem to have come from an alien planet, or simply reproducing the bush in their backyards.

But now we can have the vibrancy of a lush green garden all through summer without any of the atmosphere of the desert.

DAVE POMARRE'S LUSH, GREEN, SOFT SUCCULENT GARDEN

DAVE POMARRE'S LUSH, GREEN, SOFT SUCCULENT GARDEN

As summers get hotter we need to be smarter in our plant selections.

The choice of trees is the most important decision a gardener makes. We must avoid choosing trees that make poor shade, such as eucalypts, and select trees that have lush green foliage like nearly all the native rainforest trees from the mountainous parts of the east coast of Australia. Our Flame Tree has lush green foliage but suffers from being rather slow to get started, however Ficus hillii, Flindersia australis and the Red or White Cedar are handsome, green, drought tolerant and fast growing.

Whilst succulents that retain moisture during their growing period are the first choice, it is important to understand that while most of us choose plants because of their flowers, succulents are chosen for their unchanging form and foliage colour. That provides a more colourful selection of foliage than you would ever find in a cottage garden. It also brings a most important improvement to our suburban gardens — form!

Nowhere else in the plant kingdom can you find structural plants with such a palette of colours — from white to black, and blue to silver — and although they all flower that's the last reason to grow them.

Foliage colours found in drought tolerant succulents

Blue

With stubby jelly bean-like leaves, Blue Chalk Sticks (Senecio serpens) is the choice for sunny spots and amazingly it performs just as well in the shade.

Try Sedum seiboldii, which has scalloped leaves with pink margins, and Sedum Vera Jameson has blue-grey leaves with pink flowers. Kalanchoe grandiflora is a blue, rounded foliage succulent 60 cm tall.

The world famous garden Lotusland in California is the most innovative garden I have ever visited.

It is a garden created by Ganna Walska in 1941 and bares no relation to English, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese or Brazilian garden traditions so it exists in another world for most visitors, which makes it an incredibly exciting destination. Ganna was a famous Polish dancer and was attracted to men of great fortune like a bee is to pollen. With six husbands, she was as famous in the US as Dame Nellie Melba in Australia which clearly was no disadvantage in helping the implementation of her prodigious garden imagination.

She used plants like paints to express her creative ambitions and whilst this garden is justifiably world famous for its Dr. Seuss-like cactus collection, it was the exotic lotus garden that gave the garden its name.

Plants that are blue, such as Blue Chalk Sticks, grow under shade trees and fragments of reflective glass from a spent foundry are used to catch the light and break up the edges of paths.

The expression of form and colour that reflects the green of the tropics rather than the desert can be created by planting succulents — see the picture at right for an example created by a former Heronswood head gardener Dave Pomarre at the Elleslie Flower Show.

SOFT FOLIAGE OF ECHIUM WILDPRETTI

Silver

Silver foliage is easily attainable from the scales of Cotyledon Silver Waves which is also tough in heavy shade. But Echeveria imbricata has a form like the open bud of a blue rose of unchanging beauty every day of the year. Try also Graptopetalum paraguayense, Echeveria Paul Bunyan, Echeveria lilacina and Echeveria After Glow.

Black

Now black is a colour rarely found in any garden but can be a striking feature of a soft succulent garden.

The popular choice is Aeonium atropurpureum ‘Schwartzkopf’ which is as black as the ace of spades but there is a variant that is more compact, less stark and more easily integrated with green centres which is called ‘Velour’; it is exquisitely beautiful. Try also Echeveria Black Prince.

Green

The soft foliage of Agave attenuata is the ultimate first choice succulent but now there are alternatives with variegated edged leaves and a steely blue foliage variation ‘Nova’. Sedum x rubrotinctum has jelly bean-like rounded foliage which makes an outstanding ground cover all the more interesting when its leaves turn red sometimes.

The lushest green ground cover that smothers the weeds and provides a carpet of green at the fraction of the cost of a lawn is Baby Sun Rose. It looks so succulent that we pick it as a garnish at our Heronswood restaurant.

Aeonium undulatum has large green rosettes, whilst the newly bred Aloes with similar green foliage, like Aloe vera, have a flower colour range of pinks to pale yellows that can transform what was a ‘spoil you’ looking garden into one that is child friendly.

DIGGERS’ DIRECTOR OF HORTICULTURE TIM SANSOM HAS HIS OWN SUCCULENT GARDEN