BCSS - Forum

When things get back to normal, Cotswold Garden Flowers near Evesham is well worth a visit for hardy succulents.

Stuart

CGF is probably my favourite nursery. You are always guaranteed of getting something unusual. And Bob is such a nice chap, not that you see him there much these days. AFAIK he is still the only commercial source of the enchanting little hardy succulent Euphorbia clavarioides vr truncata. The plant in his outside test bed was going great guns, last time I saw it and that is a cold area!

As it happens, I ordered that Euphorbia from Cotswold just a few weeks ago, along with a cristate Petrosedum rupestre and a Hylotelephium tatarinowii. Waiting until spring to plant in the ground. Didn't know the store was open to the public though and had display beds, so will drop by at some point.

I also found D'arcy & Everest and Farmyard Nurseries to be good for rarer hardy succulents. Former sells a lot of Orostachys spinosa and has a good Lewisia range. Latter has some very nice Rosularia sempervivum glaucophylla. Smooth blue-green rosettes of spade-shaped leaves, handling winter in the ground very well.

Here is an image of a section of the rockery:



The prickly pear at the back is Opuntia compressa (aka O. humifusa) 'Monmouth County NJ', in front of it is a slightly different variety of O. humifusa. The adjacent clump of lime green rosettes with the slightly reddish tinge around the rim are Prometheum aizoon. Aloe brevifolia next to that. The semp at the front is Sempervivum 'Mulberry Wine'. Left-hand corner, the silver-green rosettes are Sedum spathulifolium 'Cape Blanco' with a little of a slightly worse-for-wear S. oregonese visible as well. Cholla at the back is Cylindropuntia kleiniae, with a small C. imbricata in front (that's the one with the rotting wound at the top, so will probably be pulled out and moved indoors). Dark green rosette at the edge is Jovibarba (aka Sempervivum) hirta var. neilreichii. In the background, Sedum praealtum & the skeleton of what was once Orostachys iwarenge (to be replaced in the Spring); trailing across the rocks is a Petrosedum forsterianum 'Silver Stone'.

The shoots coming up are bluebells that I inadvertently put this all on top of – too much effort to get rid of them so I'll leave them in there, at least they suck out some of the water.

A nice selection. Nice stone, too. If everything survives and grows well you'll need to start thinking about moving some plants as it will very quickly get overcrowded - but that's half the fun, seeing what does and what doesn't 'do'.

Your Aloe brevifolia is Aloe x nobilis, btw. Aloe brevifolia has thicker leaves that have a very distinct blue colour.
Some would say they are all Aloe perfoliata group but I don't like that particular lumping. The good news from this is that Aloe x nobilis is a few degrees tougher than Aloe brevifolia. It is in my garden, anyway.

Thanks for identifying it! Glad to know it’s tougher than I thought.

All the plants here were ordered in the post so I only received small specimens, which naturally led me to plant more densely for now. Further down the line things will definitely be moved out as I find what works best.

It looks good Jay and it will be interesting to see how it grows and what survives.