Enchanting succulents.

We were finally able to plant up our indoor succulent garden this weekend. For about a year many of our succulents have lived a life in obscurity dotted around our windowsills in pots. It is so lovely to finally be planting them in their intended space.

There is something very special about succulents, the way they can conserve energy and pull through times of drought.  They come in so many beautiful different colours and shapes.

We think they look beautiful with all the natural stones surrounding them. Over the years we have collected pebbles and sea shells from different beaches we have visited. Now we have the perfect space for them. We tried to match the colours of the succulents to the colours of our collected treasures. Now we can sit in our conservatory and dream about that very sunny and hot summer’s day we visited a beach on Gotland, a remote Swedish Island or the time we found beautiful seashells in Swansea.

For succulents to thrive you need very well draining space so the corner of our conservatory where the bank actually extends into the building is perfect. We have built up a rockery and planted all the succulents in the crevices and along the space behind our stone bench. We used a mix of sand and potting compost and put down a layer of gravel over the top to make it all look visually pleasing, but also for good drainage and to protect the plants on hot, scorching summer days.

It is important to only water with collected rain water as anything else can disrupt the plants natural balance. We like to use a spray bottle and spray the ground in between the plants.

We wanted some mushrooms to go with our little tiny house and decided to make a few everlasting ones. They are really quite easy to make. You will need a few twigs from the garden, round Styrofoam balls and brown coffee filters. Start by cutting the balls in half and using PVA glue, attach small pieces of coffee filter to the undersides. When that is dry, poke a sharpened twig into each half and add more paper to the tops. If you tear the filters along the perforated edge you get a lovely life like effect around the edge of your mushrooms. When they are dry use some water-soluble oil pastels to colour in the top and make it look more real. A final layer of PVA will make the pastels run and blur a bit for a nice effect. Place your mushrooms in groups and enjoy. They would look nice in any potted plant.  This idea is loosely based on a craft project in the Swedish magazine No 5 2016 101 ideer .

We can’t wait to see how our succulents will grow, spread out and fill the space. A lot of them have very beautiful flowers and we hope the conditions will be right for them to flower profusely in their new home.