success with succulents (or not)

I am pleased with my little collection of succulents outside the conservatory.  Succulents are like that, strangely moreish.  You start off with one or two, and before you know where you are they've turned into a collection.  Mine is not a very good collection, in the sense that I don't know any of their names, apart from Aeonium 'Zwartzkop', and I'm as sure as you can be without knowing what they are that none of them are rare.  One I bought at a Yellow Book open garden in the pouring rain from a knowledgable and charming local gardener, who deserved nicer weather for her open day.  A few I grew from a packet of mixed seed.  One was a cutting from an armful of branches brought in by a customer at the plant centre, who seemed strangely determined that we should have them.  I was given the job of turning the armful into pots of cuttings, and when all the available bench space was used up I was allowed to keep a couple of misshapen side shoots.

There is always a good display of them at the Chatto gardens, somewhere near the house or at the end of the nursery, and they raise theirs up on tiers made out of old planks.  I didn't have room for anything on that scale, or indeed that many plants, or the space to over-winter them under cover. However, I did have the battered remains of a nucleus beehive, which was wrecked for beekeeping purposes when a large tree fell on the shed it was stored in at the time.  I also found a small plank, with rounded edges artfully crusted with moss, which the Systems Administrator had been using to put under a leg of the scaffolding to spread the weight.  The plank exactly fitted on top of the beehive, and suddenly voila, a rustic wooden plant stand straight out of a Chelsea Flower Show Artisan Garden.  It just goes to show you should keep old junk lying around in case it comes in useful, instead of breaking it up for the fire with a lump hammer, which I had been meaning to do and not getting round to for years.

I have got on better with the succulents since learning to put a great deal of grit in their compost. A previous incarnation of Aeonium 'Zwartkop' grew very tall and leggy, and I chopped it down and used the rosettes for cuttings, and they rooted but did not make good root systems, and kept falling over in their pots.  When I bought my large and handsome many branched green Aeonium from the owner of the open garden, I was amazed at how heavy the pot was, and when I came to transfer my trophy (it was only five pounds for an absolutely huge plant) to a terracotta pot for display purposes, the penny dropped.  It was potted in a mixture that was half grit.  I repotted my other plants in something similar, and they soon became much happier.

The trouble with that sort of summer display is that you do need somewhere to store the plants for the winter.  They don't need to be warm, but they mustn't freeze, or get too soggy in their pots.  Go to the Chatto Gardens out of season and you will see rows of them crammed into a greenhouse.  If you really don't have anywhere to overwinter tender succulents then you can always stick to houseleeks.  I am very fond of houseleeks, and have them in pots on the low wall around two sides of the terrace (or patio).  I have bought a few fancy named ones, like Sempervivum arachnoideum, which is covered in fine white threads like cobwebs, but they always seemed to die out, and most of what I've got nowadays is simply from seed.  When the pot gets too congested and the individual rosettes start getting smaller you can break the whole plant up and repot the individual pieces, which will take advantage of their new space to grow large and luxuriant.  Alas, my stock of fresh plants coming along in the greenhouse has been ravaged by root aphid, and although I have almost finished dosing them with insecticidal drench, they have yet to recover.