Beautiful Succulent Plants for Everyone

Hey guys! how's it going? Laura with garden answer in today's video I want to show you some new succulents that I just got and then I also want to give you a tour of my plant room inside.

So Leaf and Clay just sent me some brand new succulents and we've mentioned them before so they've sent us succulents in the past. They're just an online resource for succulents. They've got some really gorgeous varieties and they contacted me and asked me if I would go through their website and pick out my top 12 succulents.

How do you do that when there are like hundreds of varieties of succulents to pick from and you have to narrow it down to twelve? It's really hard. So I spent so much time on their website looking through all the varieties and kind of paring it down. And what I ended up doing was paring it down to varieties that I always tend to go back to so they're like my standbys the ones I always like to have around so that I can tuck them into an arrangement when I need them.

So I just kind of went with a variety of them. So I've got twelve to show you. And then there's five extras that they sent over that are kind of cool I want to show you as well. So I didn't really order these in any particular way like one to twelve I just arranged them on the table.

So we're gonna start on this side right here this is called an Echeveria Lola there's two of them right here you can see both of them in the red pots. I love these succulents. I love the Echeveria’s. In fact if you look over kind of an overview of my top twelve here a lot of them are rosette shaped. I tend to be drawn to that kind of shape and usually the colors that they're in. So this Lola is kind of a white green and it brings a really nice bright pop to an arrangement and some of the leaves are kind of tinged on the underside with a little bit of like a pinkish purple. But I just think that they're the sweetest succulent.

The next one over is called a Ghost Echeveria and this one looks somewhat similar to the Lola in its shape except for the leaves are whiter and they kind of come up with more like heart-shaped. I mean it doesn't go down in the center but you know it's got really big lobes on the side here. And I just think that Icy blue color is really really pretty.

And then the next one over from there this is actually a Sempervivum. So this one is hearty in my area. I live in a Zone 5 so I could plant this one outside and it would survive. So this is a Sempervivum calcaeum. If I say any of these wrong just let me know. I know I probably butcher a lot of these names. A lot of succulents are not hardy or native in my area so we just kind of like make up how we pronounce the names up here in our region, some of them are wrong.

But I love this one because of the sharpness of the leaves each rosette has a bunch of leaves that look really should they're not sharp but they look sharp with the red tips. I think that that brings a really pretty element like a textural element I think to an arrangement.

And then the next one is this Echeveria agavoides, whatever, Red Tips. And I love this one because it's a green Echeveria with the bright red tips. And I've used this one quite a bit in arrangements. They're really really versatile because of the red coloring and a lot actually several of these have little tinges of red which really helps in an arrangement.

And then right back here we have Graptosedum ‘Rosea’. Such a pretty succulent and I love these because even if you find them like in a two and a quarter inch pot you can break them apart and tuck them into arrangements. So each one of these little individual rosettes can be taken apart. In fact, I'll just pull one out so you can see, see that right there. So a lot of times you'll see a two and a quarter inch pot with maybe three or four stems like this and you can just pop them apart and then tuck them into arrangements just like that and they're just happy as can be to do that for you for you. Sometimes the words don't come out of my mouth like want them to okay.

The next one is the Senecio String of Pearls. This is like an elusive succulent we have a hard time getting these up here even at the garden center where I work. And we've just recently got a pretty good supplier that supplies retailers like us and there they've just been kind of hard for us to find. And they're the perfect trailing succulent. I'd included a couple actually trailers because those are kind of necessary in an arrangement. You want something to soften the edges of your container and something that's super low-maintenance and easy to take care of and these are one of them. So I just really love this they just have such a unique look. I remember when I very first saw this succulent I wasn't sure what how I felt about it some varieties that I you know you just kind of like have to grow to appreciate. And I don't know why this was one of them because they're so amazing. But I think it was just so weird like the little leaves are little balls like little pearls. It's just just a wild looking plant.

The next one right here this is a Kalanchoe is how we pronounce it up here. I know it's I think properly called Kalanchoe Panda Plant is another name for it. But the fuzzy blue leaves on this one tip it. So you can see I just love this one because of the icy blue color because of the little chocolate tips on each leaf. And then I also like the vertical element that this brings to an arrangement because a lot of times you don't want just everything to be flat. Like for example if you have a bunch this kind of shape right here you kind of want something that will tower above it just a little bit. So the Panda plant is excellent for that in arrangements.

And then the next one is one of the other trailers I chose. This is a Donkey's Tail or Burrow’s Tail Sedum, love this plant. They are a little bit hard to handle because the leaves want to pop off pretty easy. But if you go really slow and try to handle them from the roots instead of the leaves or the plant I find that it's getting easier with practice managing this. But they do grow quite dramatically I mean like they'll drape dramatically. I have a head planter where I planted these and they were fairly short like if I were the head planter last winter when I planted him they came out like this far maybe and now they're all the way down here. Like it looks like my head planter has a nice bob it's got bangs and everything. So this is a really great grower. And I found that it actually does okay in a little bit lower light situation it doesn't tend to like string out or anything it stays pretty nice.

Next one is the Sedum Firestorm. I love this one just like with the Graptosedum Rosea, here you can take these apart and use individual stems. And they bring a nice sharp kind of a more grassy kind of texture to an arrangement especially if you're using a lot of rosettes like I like to use. It's nice to pair them with something that's different texture. So I just really feel like kind of like in a floral arrangement how people use Baby's Breath or you know like greenery as filler plants. These to me they're beautiful but I use them kind of as like filler plants they just fill in the cracks oh really nicely.

Next one is this Echeveria, this one's called Petra's Perle. So you might be familiar with the Perle von Nürnberg and that one I have seen and used a lot of. It's more of a lavender kind of look but it has the same structure as this one. This one has a lot more pink in it and I think it's really bright and really pretty. And then there's a couple others right down here Echeveria Chroma. Here you can see for obvious reasons why I like this one. Look at the color variation in the leaves. You've got a little like yellow a little kind of like whitish yellow pink green kind of purple. Just such a neat it's like a tie-dye Echeveria. I think it's really pretty.

And then right here is a Parva Echeveria, beautiful dark colored Echeveria. Love that because everything else is a little bit more pink or you know like the blues here and there's more pink and reds but this one's got definitely a deeper purple tone to it. And I like the tightness of the rosette.

Okay so those are my top 12 off of Leaf and Clay's website. I hope you liked seeing these I mean it was so hard to pick them out. I hope you guys can appreciate like the it took probably two hours maybe more to pick it out. You should see the piece of paper where I was reading down--all and like kicking some varieties out and moving some varieties in. And thank you so much Leaf and clay for sending all of these out so that I could show them off and so that I can use them in arrangements. That's so much fun.

They also sent me five other ones you guys to just kind of try out. So the first one is this Aloe Aculeata. I don't know it's a wicked-looking aloe. It's got little like needles that come out of it. I don't know it's kind of like a I could use this in a Halloween kind of motif or even like a Harry Potter type garden. Wouldn't that be cool do you like a Harry Potter fairy garden? I need to save this for that.

And then right below it is a Crassula Moonglow. Love the chubby little leaves on this one and the coloring. These are really really pretty.

Then we've got a Euphorbia Moonstones. I love this and it's all one piece you guys like all of these come together in the center really quite interesting. And they're not it looks like they're kind of like a cactus needle but they're not sharp at all. It's pretty soft.

Now we've got an Echiveria pulidonis cristata here and they've always got a really neat look to them. So this is kind of like a powdery blue with pink tips.

And then an Echeveria subsessilis variegata really pretty icy blue with white margins on the outside I mean just absolutely it kind of glows. I think it's really really pretty.

So those are all the plants that came in my box from leaf and clay. And usually we do an unboxing and I show you as I'm taking them out of a box but I feel like we've done so many of those that I went ahead and I took them out got him potted up just I had an a random assortment of nursery pots hanging out. That's why nothing matches but I thought I would get him pot it up and watered and labeled before I showed you guys this time. Just for something a little bit different but I did want to show you how they normally arrive.

So I'm just going to show you with this one right here so I'm gonna make a little bit of a mess here but they come in bare roots. So they come in with almost all the soil removed from their roots. In fact there are a lot cleaner even than this and they come wrapped in tissue paper and you if you've watched any of our past unboxings from Leaf and Clay you might remember how they come in. But they just come they arrive so beautifully their leaves aren't marred they're not broken because they're so padded. And there's not soil everywhere because when you get pre-potted succulents shipped to you there's just no way to contain the soil. And some of it gets out and it gets all over the succulents. So these ones arrive really nice and clean. So right when they get here I like to open the box ASAP so I can get them out get them potted and get them some water because I don't want their roots to be exposed to air for too long.

So then I just use some of my cactus soil I use a Espoma organic cactus soil. And then I just pop them in kind of hard with the tag in there. Kind of tap them on the table to settle the soil around the roots and that is pretty much it. I mean it's really easy. It probably took me 15 to 20 minutes to pot all of these up. So I just really appreciate it when they arrive in such great condition.

All right so I'm gonna load these all up on my tray and we'll take them up to the plant room. So this is my plant room we have showed it to you one other time before. The last time I showed it to you it was completely full of plants I'm talking like I had plants on the floor here. I had every single shelf over here was full of plants all the bottom shelves were full and you can see they're all off right now and I clean them all up. But my succulent collection it expands and contracts so quickly because of how many projects we do that you just never know what its gonna look like in here if there's gonna be a lot or just a few. And sometimes it looks semi organized like it is right now I've got everything pretty clean-ish in here and sometimes it looks like a complete disaster.

I had an attack of mealy bugs this last, well it was probably earlier this summer and so I have been diligently cleaning like Cloroxing all of my surfaces. I've been using a ton of insecticide just to kind of keep on top of it because mealy bugs are the worst. I must have brought in one plant that had him and that I didn't see and it quickly spread into the room.

So all of these plants are pretty much free from everything from any insect pests or disease or anything like that. These are all the tough ones that made it through so here are all the new ones that I just showed you downstairs. I got them all arranged on this shelf here. I think they'll all be really happy right here. I've been really happy with these plant shelves in particular because each individual ballast has two light bulbs. So there's two bulbs that run the whole length of the shelf which gives a really equal light. So that you know some of those ballasts only have one tube one light bulb and it makes everything stretched toward it. So this gives more even light and the plants seem to be happier. Plus each one of the ballasts raises and lowers you can see there's little chains where you can pulley them up or down depending on how tall your succulents are.

So in fact I probably should move this one down just a little bit because I want the light to be pretty direct on top of these so that they don't stretch or lose their color. But just like that it's really easy. We actually did a video on these Gardener suppliers sent me one for a video and I liked it so much that I bought two more. I would eventually like to switch this whole room over to it. But the other places here about some clamp lights as well you know shining on these. This little grouping those work in a small space I've also got like right here. I don't have it on obviously because the light bulbs down here these plants are lower light plants. And this cactus right here is not low light but it gets lots of light from the window. That's one reason why we chose this room for the plants because of all the windows.

This room is probably the brightest in our entire house so this is a southern exposure… no, this is not southern, I don't know why I thought that, this is Western exposure. So it's afternoon Sun and this is north so it doesn't get like beating Sun because there's a Juniper right here that kind of filters it out a little bit. But it stays super super bright in here and everything seems to be really happy.

So I also keep a supply of containers up here so everything right here it has all been cleaned. So every time I take a plant out of a container and I'm wanting to plant something new in it I clean it with a bleach water solution. So everything here has been cleaned. I have a stack over here that's all clean. So these are all ready for new plants and then this right here is a stack of used ones. You can see I need to take these downstairs and give them a scrub real quick before I use them for anything else.

But I just have a menagerie of stuff. I have some you know like a Pegasus begonia. I'm starting to move some of my plants inside because we have a few nights in the 30s this week. So like I think 38 and 39 is what it's calling for a couple of the nights and that's getting kind of close to freezing. So I'm just doing kind of a slow transition of my plants inside.

And then check this out. This poor Mangave was underneath, it was sitting on this shelf. I did not even notice that it had a bloom stock on it until it was this big. I feel so bad so this thing grew up it hit the top of this shelf right here and then it just started to twist and go up toward the light over there. Sad poor thing is a little bit misshapen, but this shelf right here is nice because you can extend the shelves however high you want them.

So if you've got taller plants like the Euphorbia or the Mangave. I've got a Sansevieria back here you can make them taller. So the little lights not just like right on them. So I've also got an agave right here which last year it was looking really sick and I brought it in and it stayed inside all summer in fact and it's looking a lot better. It's starting to like put new growth on. Hopefully it'll regain shape and then I've got a tangerine and then over here I've just got a bunch of different small things.

So it's really nice to be able to come up in here and just kind of pick what I need you know for whatever arrangement I'm working on. And I just like to come up here and spend time up here I mean I don't know about you guys but I don't even need to be making an arrangement or whatever but just coming up here and tending to. I'm giving them water repotting I'll put like a movie or music on on my phone up here and I'll just like stay up here for a few hours and just work on things grooming and that kind of deal.

So anyway that concludes the tour of the plant room. I hope you enjoyed seeing how it looks now. It'll probably evolve. I will probably show it to you again at some point. So anyway thank you guys so much for watching this video and again a huge thank you to Leaf and Clay for sending me all of the new succulents. I'm really excited to use them. We'll see you guys in the next video. Bye. [Music]