Front Yard Succulent & Rock Garden

How to Make a Rock and Succulent Garden.

In the front yard, we have a line of bushes and in front of those, I usually plant annual flowers until they die, and then I switch them out.

This area has been a work in progress since last year in March when I bought some of these stone edgers at Home Depot, cleared out this area, and placed some flowers down. At the time, I was guessing how many edgers I needed, and was short, but then they were sold out for awhile. I am happy to say that I finally purchased the remaining ones a couple months ago to finish the edging!

Then there was the case of did I want to put mulch around the flowers? I purchased two bags of red mulch also last year in March, and they’ve been sitting because I wasn’t completely sold.

You might also like to see Faye’s Succulent Garden.

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Previously, I had red Poinsettias and small white flowers (the same as the ones in my 4th of July porch, but I don’t know what they’re called) from the past Christmas season, but at the time of this project (this month in early June) only two Poinsettias and one of the white flowers were still alive because we completely neglected this area, as you can see with all the weeds!

In our Home Depot trip this month, I wanted to get some new flowers for this area, but my husband suggested succulents since they’re pretty and so much easier to take care of, plus won’t die. Yes! Love that idea.

As you can see in my photos, the plants are in pots – this was my mom’s idea. She has a flower bed that she changes the flowers out of, just like I do. She has pots in the bed, and just puts the new plant right into it so when the plant dies, she can just pull it out, and put something else in the pot without having to dig the whole thing out again, and I loved that idea.

Knowing I’d be using the smaller pots in the ground, I bought larger pots of succulents that I could easily separate into several plants.

I pulled out all the weeds, trimmed up the bottom of the bushes, pulled out all the dead plants, and cut the bottoms out of the pots so the roots wouldn’t be restricted, since I knew the succulents wouldn’t die like the annuals.

I also replanted the two Poinsettias and the white flower in one big pot.

I filled my pots up with Cactus, Palm and Citrus Soil – this is what succulents like. Succulents like to be soaked in water, but also fast draining soil because they don’t like to sit in the water.

Then I dumped my larger pots of succulents into a big pot, and just massaged the dirt and roots to gently separate the plants, and…

… planted one or two sprigs in each pot.

After I got all my plants into their pots, and I was happy, I laid down some newspaper. This is another trick my mom taught me yeeeeeaaaarrrrsss ago. You lay down 3-4 sheets of newspaper down around the plant, and throughout the area that will be covered up so you don’t have to deal with weeds later.

After all the newspaper is covering the area, then I added gray rocks that I had leftover from a project in the backyard. I am not a rock person, but I really like this gray color, and I thought it complemented the succulents well.

This photo is one of my favorites! Can you see the little lizard? Apparently, they love succulents. I find them all over my containers of succulents.

After these photos, I went back, and cleaned up the petals. You will notice on some of the petals on the very bottom are not looking good. It’s best to pull those off so they don’t take the energy and nutrients from the rest of the plant.

And here is my finished area! I just love it!

So the golden rule is not to water your succulents too much, but here in Florida, it is hot and humid all the time, and since succulent dirt dries very quickly on it’s own, and moreso with them outside, we water our succulents every day, (or close to it when we remember) and they are happy.

Succulents are excellent plants though because they are very forgiving. They really do not need much water, and could go several days, and still be happy. You can tell a lot from the petals of the succulents. If they look wrinkly, they’re getting too much water, and if they’re looking dried out, they need a little more water.

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