Thursday, October 7, 2010

in the garden - Sedum "Autumn Joy"

(source)

So you have a brown thumb.
Here is one you'd have to try really hard to kill.

Keeping up with the "Climate Change My Cottage Garden" theme, sedums are right up there as one of the key species to convert with.

Because what a tough plant they are!

Sedums originate from Eurasian and are a member of the succulents group, it is frost hardy and can put up with the soil drying out. Sedum itself is middle english for "stonecrop" - which means it grows from the cracks in stones.

Like most plants, don't expect that prolonged periods with out a little drink wouldn't be of benefit - even when it is a succulent - don't mix it up with cacti !

Strong flowering stems (60 - 90cm) are produced in early to mid Summer with rosy pink blossoms in large umbels (umbrella type flowers).
Great for bringing indoors, if you can bear to - the butterflies go nuts on them.

Grey green foliage is very structural and forms a very uniform clump that will die down to mere furled leaf buds in Winter.

Spring foliage

The soft succulent leaves don't really do well with traffic, so its best to keep the plants away from paths where they will get damaged.

Once the flowers have finished, the seed heads can be retained to give an architectural feature to your Winter garden. Laced with frost they are a real eye catcher.

potted stock

HAPPY GARDENING !

9 comments:

  1. Well I love any plant that has a bee attraction.. and your sedum"autumn joy" looks like it could fit my garden no probs...
    Hope you have enjoyed the little rain we had yesterday.. no watering today :))
    have a great day :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Lee, I just looooooove Autumn Joy, have been meaning to get some for years. It certainly does have some great qualities and the colour is fab.
    Lovely drop of rain yesterday. there were 19mls in the gauge and a Huntsman!! Blue skies and a breeze today.

    Claire X

    ReplyDelete
  3. spot the gardeners !
    yes we had a great splash of rain over night, but today is very windy.
    the ground is soft so its weed pulling weather :)
    prickly lettuce everywhere, and dandelions . .
    there is also a great sedum called burgundy lace - it has smaller leaves and flowers but a purple tinge to the leaves and more purplisy flowers - grab it if you ever spot it !

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like the sound of the purply one you've just described!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow, they are gorgeous! And, yep... I have a 'brown' thumb. I do have lots of succulents in my garden though, they're the best thing for me as they're basically care 'free'. I also have some golden diosmas (is that how you spell it?) as I love the colour of them and they're also pretty darn hard to kill! I have french lavender too, and I seem to have kept that alive so far (by doing not much - lol).

    Linda. xox

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gorgeous photos! I love sedums but don't have any at the moment, maybe next year... :) x

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hello, thanks for the welcome back. I've just been catching up with all your news. Don't you just love being able to do that with blogs! I love the alphabet font and size of the stamps from the previous post. Looks really professional. The site I had picked for the pre Xmas co-op fell through. It's hard to find something week to week rental. There are a lot of land owners in this city who don't mind if the shops stay vacant...literally. They give the impression that business is not booming but there are lots of places just laying.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hey Lee! Just wanted to let oyu know that I have tagged you in a game of 'get to know you' if you want to play along :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Fabulous.. sounds exactly what I need.. since I moved here I bought 3 plants and have killed them all.. and working on killing the original plants here also!! will check this one out.. and thanks for all the info...

    Hope you have a wonderful weekend.. xxx Julie

    ReplyDelete

Pinterest