I apologize in advance...I'm not going to be as brief as Melissa but for some of you, I may be repetitive.
My first sentences reference the beginning of an article I wrote for Sempervivum Week in 2013.
https://garden.org/ideas/view/...
re: Living Pictures: "The first one I (ever) saw, planted with tender succulents, had a jade plant growing out from it and I thought: "Gee, when this jade gets bigger, it will be growing perpendicular to the frame and look peculiar when the frame is hung up." I thought then that succulents with a lot less stem should be used. That is when I decided that Sempervivums would be my plant of choice for making my version of living pictures."
And there began my hunt for semps that would be the foundation of the planting of my living picture frames.
That was in the very early 90's when I was already collecting/cultivating tender succulents in CA. Adding semps to my succulent hobby introduced the first of what I now know as hardy succulents. From then on I collected semps but did not "indulge" in identification of them. If you read the above article it will tell you what I looked for in semps; names were not one of the requirements.
While collecting semps solely for filling in frames, I moved from CA to NM to WA and back to CA and then to OR. In 3 different states I always kept and moved the semps in their flats, never feeling comfortable enough to plant them into the ground anywhere. I guess I knew that a new move was always around the corner. I have sold about 100 frames but eventually ended up with just 12 empty frames as one of the moves required us to leave the wood cutting machines behind. No more new frames. By then I was collecting semps solely for the 12 frames that I had left and a small raised bed in CA. In 2012, I was looking for answers to grub infestation and came upon Doctor Houseleek on All Things Plants and the thread "Wall Farming".
The thread "Wall farming" in
Containers forum
That led to 3 things:
1) the introduction to the neatest group of semp crazed people...
2) the cheerful habit of posting on the ATP, now the National Gardening site
3) the daunting chore of keeping identification on most of my semps just to be on trend with everyone on the Semp forum.
It was after the winter of 2017, when I lost
all my tender succulents, that I made the decision to focus my gardening efforts solely on Sempervivums. It was a good decision as my gardening has simplified somewhat.
