Indoor succulent plant gardens
Aloes succulents and fat plants grow easy indoors in pots or containers. Good drainage and strong light is all that they need. Here are two indoor gardens. A succulent indoor garden in a flat container with mainly fat plants from South Africa and a desert garden in a bowl with succulents and aloes from Namibia. The soil mix contains dolomite gravel, coarse sand and soil. A very weak plant food is given every 6 months with a sprinkling of a few Magnesium sulphate crystal between the plants. (A quarter teaspoon at the most.)

click on the photo to enlarge. The succulent plants in this indoor garden from South Africa. The white plant at the back is a Cotyledon, next row from the left is Aloe davyana, Aloe hybrid in the center and to the right back. Front row from the left is Euphorbia mammilaris. Gasteria species, Gasteria x Aloe hybrid and a group of Aloe brevifolia plants. The ground cover is two Crassula sp. The container is watered thoroughly and then permitted to dry out.

click on the photo to enlarge. This is a desert garden with plants from Namibia. The back row left to right:- mesemb, Tylecodon species, Aloe variegata, Euphorbia gariepina. Front left to right:- mesemb, Cotyledon species, the small plants are Euphorbia juttae, Aloe melanacantha and the small plant to the right of Aloe melanacantha is Anacampseros buderiana. This garden receives only enough rain water to damp the soil. It is then permitted to dry out. It may be necessary to merge the bowl in rain water once a year to rinse out salts or better would be to replace the growing medium with a fresh mix.
For more information and tips see cultivating succulent plants in pots and containers

Rock wall garden

Usually a rock garden needs a lot of space, but this rock garden in the shape of a wall can be build in a very small area. There seems to be a shortage of planting space in any garden. Even if there is an open area then more often than not it will be in the wrong place.
If your hobby happens to be succulents then you can expand your hobby by building succulent plant walls in the relative small places like on a porch or patio against the wall or in the corner. In this situation it might be a good idea to use lightweight fake stones and a ready made small garden pond as base to catch the water and keep in the soil.

Rock garden against a wall

Hide an unsightly old wall by building a rock garden against the wall.


Or ----- build a rock wall

 in the backdoor garden mainly for the cliff hanging aloes. You might see a small portion of it in the left back corner on the last photo of the previous blog (thank you for water restrictions). It is behind the Aloe africana in bloom.
Here is how I built the wall. I have no doubt that most who do it will do it better but here is a rough idea to get you going.
Not counting hauling all those rocks - The rock garden wall was easy and relatively quick to build, while sitting on a folding chair. Rudi did not help (no need). I "use" him only when I must - and that is a lot.









The large heavy cement blocks do not need cement, just put them down. Use cement to keep the rocks in place on top of each other, unlike the normal rock garden where the rocks do not need cement as they are packed on and into a slope of ground. Leave a space between the building-blocks and the rock wall and leave some holes for the plants between the rocks. I found afterwards that if the wall was watered from the top, the soil spilled out of many of the planting holes. I stuffed the holes with paper which will decay in time and by that time the plants would have made enough roots to keep the soil from spilling out. Maybe if I had though of it I could have built the wall in "compartments" using paper as stoppers instead of the frustration afterwards to get the stoppers into the holes without damaging plants. It is also easier to fill the soil while building, than to try to force in soil into the small planting holes. blush... I should have thought of that while building.








The work scene. As you can see, it is easier with a little help and encouragement from a best friend. Watching between snoozes from the distance ( right side of photo).  Mix the size, colour and shape of the rocks. The wall must have a rough appearance, like a heap of rocks lying where they fell.








The succulent plants need to grow a lot more before the wall would be like I imagined it. It is nice to see the plants grow and find odd small succulents and small type aloes to stick in the holes.








The aloes on the top are Aloe hadyi. It is a cliff hanging aloe. Those leaves grow pointing down, they are not soft hanging down. If one of those aloes would be placed upright those leaves will stick out sideways. New leaves will change direction to grow down once more. I have seen that aloe grown from the watering hole underneath a hanging pot. It looks quite interesting. The flower inflorescens grows sideways for a short way, then it bends and grows upwards past the rest of the aloe plant still going downward.

This succulent rockwall garden is standing for 4-5 months. The cement is too clean and most plants must fill their space and some will be removed. I will keep you posted in another year.

It is not perfect yet, that is the ongoing challenge.
2014