Succulent Surprise

If you read my blog posts even occasionally, you probably know I have a LOT of succulents.  They do very well here in general and, as our summers grow hotter and our problems with drought persist, I've added more and more of them.  In June 2016, I planted Aeonium haworthii 'Kiwi Verde' from 6-packs all over the garden.  'Kiwi Verde' is a more understated sibling of variegated 'Kiwi', which I've previously described as my "gateway succulent."  The latter was the first succulent I introduced in my former garden.  I brought cuttings with me to my current garden in December 2010 and planted them here too.  They're attractive, well-behaved plants and they've filled in nicely as edging material in several areas of my garden.

I used Aeonium 'Kiwi' here to edge one side of the back patio

and here to edge a portion of the gravel path in the area on the north side of the house

I expected 'Kiwi Verde' would behave the same way.  I found it grew a bit faster and taller but it also appeared well-behaved - until it didn't.

Here's what the plants I added to the sandy bed along the back patio looked like back in March

And this is what the plants look like now.  Unlike 'Kiwi', which produced only a couple of flowers here and there this year as in prior years, 'Kiwi Verde' has bloomed heavily everywhere it was planted.

Back in late March, when I was pondering what I should do with the sandy bed along the patio, 'Kiwi Verde' was still all foliage and no flowers,  I went ahead and filled in the empty center of the bed with a second Yucca 'Blue Boy' and low-growing Festuca glauca.  Since 'Kiwi Verde' began blooming like crazy, I'm once more considering a wholesale renovation of this bed.  The Aeonium rosettes that flowered will die back, leaving holes in that bed, as well as the bed next to it.

One of the principal reasons I didn't remove the Aeoniums in the other bed in the first place was that I had a matching set on the this side of the flagstone path too

This is what the bed in question looks like at present.  The Yucca cutting, while still small, will gain size in time.

I'm going to let 'Kiwi Verde' finish out its bloom cycle but I think I'll pull the Aeoniums out of this bed and the adjacent one when they finish up.  The plants will fit more nicely in other areas of the garden than in they do along the patio.

They look as good in flower as they did beforehand in this spot on the south side of the house

and the flowers do look rather pretty in a vase

I'm not entirely back to square one on the patio bed area.  Yucca 'Blue Boy' #2 is really happy there so I may add a third plant and simply fill in with more blue fescue.

'Blue Boy' has colored up nicely since I planted it here.  (Thanks again for the cutting, Denise!)

As the saying goes, "If at first you don't succeed...".



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