The sun has got its hat on - summer for succulents outdoors
- milestoh22
- Jan 5, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Jan 6, 2023
Sorry for the long hiatus since the last blog but A levels & starting uni (Miles) and busy work & outdoor gardening (Dad) took precedence over our Wacky Houseplants blog.
However we have much to share with you, house-planties - summer stories to warm up your winter as we retreat from our gardens and many of our houseplants go into dormancy. We will take you outdoors to look at our rockery project started in lockdown 2020, where hardy succulents happily live. And we will show you why bringing houseplants to enjoy the summer outside with us is a great idea. This is safe once the danger of night frost has passed in May and the daytime temperatures climb to a warm 18-20 degrees Celsius (at least in the south of England). Infact, it went up to a dizzying 40 degrees last July!
This was a treat especially for house-plants that enjoy the heat and humidity, but also for some tropical garden plants we grow outside for part of or all the year round, namely banana, taro and figs. These went absolutely mad with growth last year, basking in that glorious sunshine.
Our fig above is now about 5 years old, planted outside against an east facing wall and it has grown to over 3 metres in height and for the first time, it is laden with figs that ripen this season. We had wasps last season and we tolerated them as they helped pollinate the figs.
The taro above is a new experiment, grown from tubers over spring, kept in the dark in warm moist plastic bags next to the hot water tank for 4 weeks to produce suckers, before planting out in a pot and then left to grow in the hot sun all summer.
It has produced leaves up to 30cm in length in one summer. I was hoping for larger leaves as we had a lovely holiday in Malaysia last summer, and the taros in our hotel were ginormous. However, these were Giant Taro (Alocasia macrorrhizos) which has the largest un-split leaves in the world, up to 2m in length. Perhaps I might be brave to try to grow these next year but might need a larger conservatory if we do!
We also always wanted a banana tree - yes, this is a bit of a cliche but for us, it reminds us of home as we had banana trees in our gardens in Malaysia. For example, we visited our aunt in Singapore last summer and she has these majestic King banana trees (Musa 'Pisang Raja' ) in her garden. These grow to a height of 20 feet, and their bananas are divine - sweet, dense and creamy. They are a million miles from the sad Cavendish variety we have in our supermarkets in UK. If you look at the picture carefully, you will notice one of the banana trees has fallen over and expired. This is what happens after it has delivered its bunch of fruit, but new 'pups' quickly grow from the same rhizome to replace it.
The bananas we grow in UK are sadly ornamental and will not produce edible fruit. I grew this Red Abysinnian Banana Plant (Ensete maurelii) below from a small shoot I bought online in spring and it has grown to about 1m in one summer. Its leaves will probably not be much larger, about 75cm max, when fully grown.
If you are observant, you will notice that both the taro and banana are actually indoors in my unheated summer house which I have partially converted into a green-house by replacing the roof with glass panels. I brought them in early November as the temperatures were dropping overnight, in the hope to prolong their growing season. The banana will probably go dormant in winter (but surprisingly has not died down in Jan 2023 despite a cold winter) but it will regrow this spring. I am hoping the taro will continue to grow as I will bring it into a heated conservatory before the frost arrives. Will let you know how they thrive in later blogs.
As for bringing succulents out to the garden, here are some looking a little jaded at the start of summer:
And this is how they looked - radiant and glossy after a summer in the sun:
Why build a Rockery and its value to houseplanties
Rockeries are back in fashion with several in show gardens in Chelsea. We created our modest one below as a family project during lockdown 2020 and added a pond in 2021. This is south-facing about 300m from the seafront, only protected from strong winds by a single fence. We have therefore chosen plants that are drought and salt-tolerant so that they will thrive.
Rockery construction May-July 2020 with early plantings
Rockery flourishing by May 2021 - look at the Erigenon karvinskianus (Mexican fleabane) happily scrambling over the rocks. Heucharias thriving in the borders with one of our favourite yellow stonecrop Sedum reflexum 'Aureum' in the pots surrounding the Callistemons below
Rockeries are dry environments by design. Loved by the Victorians, they are back as a good example of a sustainable drought-tolerant garden feature that we will all need in a future with global warming. The picture above deliberately does not show it at its best after this hot summer with little watering, but we know these plants will survive. I thought you might be interested in a few of the plants that frame or grow in the rockery, apart from the succulents and alpines. They are numbered in the picture above:
Erigeron karvinskianus (Mexican fleabane)
Heuchera 'Fire Alarm' (coral bells)
Osteospermum 'Tresco Purple' (African daisies) - in full bloom below, a tough evergreen
Callistemon laevis (Australian bottle brush) - in bloom below & seriously drought tolerant
Mahonia x media 'Winter Sun'
Iris pseudacorus (yellow flag pond iris)
All the succulents you see in the rockery are mostly winter-hardy sempervivum, jovibarba and sedum varieties as below.
We hope this trip to the garden has inspired some of you more house-bound 'gardeners' to get out there next summer and try your skills at making a rockery, feature or houseplant display - do let us know how you do and we will post some of your best efforts later in the year.
Here are a couple more displays for inspiration that worked well for us this summer - a succulent/alpine table feature and a hanging pot. We are particularly fond of the alpine genus called Armerias - these thrifts just love being by the seaside!
In the next blog, we will talk about how houseplants finally rule in 2022 at the Chelsea Flower Show and about looking after houseplants in winter. And as always, we will display a few inspirational plants that gave us much pleasure last year - a bromeliad, a giant cactus and a kalanchoe that flowered prolifically and simply blew us away!
Till next time, we wish you a very Happy New Year indeed and do keep houseplanting to keep the blues away!
God bless you all, Miles & Dad!
Happy New Year, friends and fellow houseplanties!
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