That is so clever. I wondered how you got them to stack in such a precarious way. It is obvious that your succulents love the clay pots, they look so happy and healthy.
I will give it a try this summer. I can see that in the flower bed at the front of the house.
Thank you for the link Becky.

beckygardener said:Lynn - Here is a link on how to make a tipsy pot arrangement: http://gardensandcrafts.com/ti... or http://www.birdsandblooms.com/...

I have 3 in my yard. One arrangement is sticking up out of a large pot at the front of my house. People coming to my front door often comment on it and try to figure out how I got those pots to stack on top of each other like that. Succulents grow great in them here in Florida! I have trouble growing most other plants in them because they dry out so fast. But I do grow certain flowering plants in them as well. Succulents really do the best of all !!!

This is one of the tipsy pots that is in a drought area of my yard. I grow some veggies in buckets as you can see in the background.

That would make an awesome water feature if you could use a hollow pipe instead of rebar to hold the pots... I might have to do some thinking on that...

You know, I have a bunch of clay pots that I didn't use last year. Hmmmmm, probably have to disassemble it in the winter tho.

Thanks, Becky. I like the look of the 4x8x16.

And probably 8" tall is as large as I should go. The stablest configuration is probably stepping each block back "into" the slope, rather than tilting them a few degrees.

I'v e been thinking I should use a masonry or concrete wheel on an angle grinder to cut pavers (or cinder blocks) cleanly to get angled corners or the right length. But I haven't tried that yet. Do you have a preferred method for cutting blocks to size or on an angle?

Woofie - I have taken mine apart during a couple of cold winters (which doesn't happen often) and brought the plants into the garage. I was able to slide them carefully back onto the rebar in the Spring when I put them back outside again.

Rick - I like your idea with the pavers. I wonder if they would be more stable if you were able to bury them into the soil a few inches? Having a sloped yard is an issue, I well know. I haven't had to cut any of the concrete or cinder blocks. I have no idea how to do that. I just build the beds to the size of the cinder blocks or bags of concrete.

I wanted to show y'all the concrete "stones" I am making into a medium sized bed border/wall around the garden bed under my Oak Tree. I have trailing lavender lantana and rain lilies growing in that bed. I will be stacking another layer on top of this layer of concrete bags, but it is going to take me a while. 60 lb. bags are awfully heavy to lift several times (into the shopping cart, into the car trunk, out of the car and to my backyard, etc ) ....

Well now, that is quite clever Becky. I don't think I could lift those anymore.
That wall isn't going anywhere.

Lynn - Over time the concrete stones will weather too. It should definitely stop the erosion in my backyard! I need to find a strong strappin young man to do the hauling and lifting. I was also thinking I could sit the concrete on it's side once it's dried hard to make a path border along my sloping yard.

I'm in awe at your lugging around multiple bags of concrete. My heavy lifting goes in to bringing home bags of dried manure for soil-making. And wheelbarrowing clay or soil around.


>> I wonder if they would be more stable if you were able to bury them into the soil a few inches?

Maybe, but I would expect them to snap if the soil shfted and put much weight on them. I had expected the weight of the pavers to make them sink into the soil over years, but HAH! With my clay, it would take a sledgehammer to make anything "sink" into that clay!

When they built this park, they must have bulldozed off every crumb of soil that was softer than a rock.

Leaning the pavers inwards works fine for me, except that they do move slightly and get messy over a few years. When I remember, I even them up by:
1. tilt one out a few degrees and pour some soil down the crack, then pat it back into place
2. tap the paver with a 2x4, or lay the 2x4 flat on the paver & tap that with a mallet

I think a little concrete glue would fix them solidly in place, but then I couldn't re-size or move a bed on a whim.

For the very first bed I made, I thought for some reason that I had to anchor the pavers deep. So I sank one row deep using pick and shovel, then used that as a footing for another row. Total waste of effort.

For a while I did something similar on an upper bed, but that also served no purpose. Right now every wall except that first one is just one row sitting on clay. 8" tall, 12" tall or 16" tall.

Well, in some cases digging the clay DOWN was too much work when leveling pavers, so instead I used pebbles to prop half of each paver UP to level it. I don't have any photos of those, but I'll see what I can do to get them.

Rick that looks great. I love the way you curved them.

Very nice Rick! I see your dilemma, but you've figured out how to work around the clay and slope. Looks good!

That seems to b e my only graceful skill! Everything else has the grace of the Army Corps of Engineering. But "follow the sidewalk" gave me nice curves.

In my dreams, some day I will get two of my newer beds' soil richer, and tidy up four beds' walls into matching curves around a big stump. It's complicated by being my steepest slope - and a 'staircase' that I'm gradually improving until it's recognizable as a staircase and not an ankle-breaking obstacle course.

Then I'll convert the plants around the stump to a mostly-white theme. If I ever get that looking almost, dare I saw, pretty, I'll move Elizabeth Angel out to that stump and name it my Goddess Garden.

Another place where "follow the path" was the best plan. I hope to mow more heather out and widen the narrow bed in the left-hand photo.


BEFORE I made any beds. Its hard to tell, but this slopes up and the stump is off-frame to the right.



The staircase-to-be will, unfortunately, skirt around a prickly-leaved holly tree that some bird gifted to me. The ratty wall near the center of the photo will curve around as if centered on the stump (off-frame to the right and up.




From above, looking down:

Very nice, Rick! And it may have been a waste of effort, but I like the looks of the bed with the footing.

Thanks! When I started, I laughingly said that my plans were so grandiose, they were a "Five Year Plan". Well, it's getting on towards five years already, and I'm less than 1/3 done.

Ha ha ha ha! Know that feeling!

Rick - I, too, like the curved path! Very nice garden areas!

I have also been on the 5 year plan which got side-tracked when the recession hit 5 years ago. I think I am on the 15 year plan now. LOL! I can't help but wonder if I will ever see the completion of my long term plan....

(sigh)

Still, it's better than running out of new things to try in the garden.

Rick - My gardens never look the same from one year to the next! I think that is why I enjoy gardening. I never get bored of it! LOL!

Thought I'd post this photo that I took recently of the cinder block 3-tiered bed taken at night. I took this photo so you could see more of the background around that garden bed. Looking at the picket fence, I am now thinking I should just paint the cinder block white. I had originally thought a medium or light blue would look nice, but now I am not so sure. The pink roses climbing the arbor on the right and the red roses climbing up the arbor on the left might also clash with blue paint. I have a variety of daylilies that I grow in that cinder block bed. I enjoy cross-pollinating them to get new blooming plants, so all were grown from seeds. The bloom colors and patterns vary, so that too might clash with blue. I don't know .... what do you think?

Oh, man! Colors - AND planning ahead? I think you're asking the wrong guy.

I would have thought a light or pastel blue would go with anything ...
... white might be a safe choice, but you already have several white things ... unless that makes it a theme ...

The part that appeals to me most of what you said was:
>> The bloom colors and patterns vary,
To me that sounds lively, bright and informal, hence good.
I mostly practice cottage gardening, or "chaotic gardening".

If you're very, very generous, you might call my sense for color or artistic matters "primitive". "Non-existent" would be fair, and "eye-wrenching" could not be called slander.

The author of Dilbert was thinking of me when he said that you should never let the software engineer pick the colors for a user interface. "Struck blind" and "vertigo" are common outcomes.

But good luck! Better than asking me would be spin-the-bottle in your garage, and whatever color paint can it points to, try that one.

Ha! Don't ask me either, largely because I like blue. My last house was blue, with blue and grey trim. But I would think that a pale blue wash would look nice, one of those greyish blue colors. Tsk, and you think that red, white and blue would clash?