How to Design a DIY Succulent Garden in 5 Steps
There’s something about a succulent garden that’s just so cool, modern, and full of personality! They are anything but boring, and there are so many exciting varieties. Designing your DIY succulent garden is an excellent way to let your creativity shine and give your yard a fun personal touch.
Designing a DIY Succulent Garden is Easier Than You Think!
Follow these simple steps to create an absolutely gorgeous succulent garden. Don’t be surprised if people find it hard to believe it was a first-time DIY project!
Decide On a Color Scheme
An attractive color scheme is a great starting point for any design. It helps inform your decisions of what kind of plants to get and how you should lay them out. If your garden is a chaotic mix of clashing colors, it might look cool, but it could also end up looking like a mess. For a modern, stylish look that feels curated and deliberate, pick three or four complementary colors. For example, you could do a cooler-toned palette like icy silver, blue-green, and lavender, or something warmer like gold, lime green, orange, and red.
Create Rock Perimeters
One of the simplest ways of making a succulent garden is by creating several mini-gardens. Assemble rock perimeters throughout the space to section off your landscape into smaller gardens. Fill them in with a potting mix suitable for succulents, and then cover the surrounding gaps outside the rock perimeters with decorative pebbles. This way, you can cover a larger surface area without having to purchase hundreds upon hundreds of succulents. Plus, it looks pretty, and the pebbles act like mulch, blocking weed seeds from germinating and slowing down soil moisture evaporation.
Play With Levels
If you want an awe-inspiring succulent garden set up, create elevated areas and experiment with contrasting heights. One easy way to do this is by creating tiered garden levels with your rock perimeters. Create one large rock circle, fill it with potting medium, make a smaller rock perimeter on top of that, fill it up, and now you’ve got the base for a multi-level succulent garden! Once you’ve planted all your succulents, the finished results will look so absolutely idyllic.
Sketch Out Your Layout
You can make some incredible patterns by planting different succulent varieties together to create an artistic design. Since they have such a solid form and don’t flutter in the wind like other plants, you can create crisp lines and motifs through artful mass planting. For example, take some green echeverias, purple aeoniums, and silvery blue agaves, and line them up to create stripes and swirls of contrasting color. Sketching out a game plan ahead of time will help you pull off a neat, polished design.
Remember when we said it’s important to play with levels? Well, another great way to create varying heights is with a strategic choice of plants. Tall, flashy plants like Euphorbia ammak look great in the very center of a round succulent garden or the very back of a garden situated along a fence or wall. This way, they can act as a focal point without blocking the other plants around them.
Shorter plants that are more mounded or tend to spread out, like hens n’ chicks or stonecrop, are great for filling in gaps between bigger plants. Along the edge of your garden, plant trailing succulents so their pretty foliage can spill down the sides of the rock perimeter. Adding in some boulders here and there can also bring visual contrast and different levels to the scenery.
Get Planting!
Once your garden rock foundation is all laid out, your soil is ready, and your DIY design is all decided, you’re ready to start planting your succulents! Try to plant your succulents on a cooler day, early in the morning. This way, the ground won’t be scorching hot from the sun, so your succulents won’t get shocked by the change in temperature. Remember to water them deeply and often for those first few weeks after planting to help their roots spread out.
Once you’re happy with your finished DIY succulent garden project, you have to take some good pictures to show off all your hard work! Enjoy your garden––and you have every right to flex those flawless design skills. Feel free to tag us on Instagram or Facebook—we’d love to see your amazing creations!
For all your plants, supplies, and everything else you need to pull off your DIY succulent garden design, visit Roger’s Gardens in Corona del Mar. Our experts will be happy to help you find what you’re looking for or answer any questions about caring for your new succulent garden.