How To Make Garden Art With Colourful Succulents

Colourful succulents, with their beautiful, complex shapes look like mini works of art. Here we show you how to plant a succulent pot to make your own piece of garden art, inspired by the still life paintings of the Old Masters.

This succulent planter is for the garden, so we are using the Sempervivum varieties of succulents (also known as Houseleeks and Hen and Chicks). They are super easy to grow, propagate really quickly and come in a vast range of shapes and colours.

The only thing these pretty, colourful succulents really dislike is being waterlogged. We have grown them successfully in all manner of quirky plantings including our Succulent Hedgehog and our Chicken Wire, Moss and Succulent Toadstool.

What you need to make garden art with colourful succulents.

• Shallow Terracotta Pot to hold your display
• Small Terracotta pot or ceramic jug
• Selection of Outdoor Succulent Plants (Amazon affiliate link)
• Succulent Compost
• Gravel or similar to top dress the pot – we used Coloured Aquarium Gravel (Amazon affiliate link)

Start by filling your pot with a decent layer or gravel or stones to aid drainage. Succulents are drought-resistant plants, storing water in their fleshy leaves. They thrive in dry, rocky conditions in their natural habitats, and although easy to care for, can rot if kept in too moist conditions.

Fill the pot with compost. I used succulent compost which has lots of grit ready blended in to aid drainage, but you could make your own up using garden compost and adding some grit or sand.

How to make garden art with colourful succulents

Now it is time to create your piece of garden art. My inspiration came from the old master still life paintings of vases of flowers, so that’s what I have tried to recreate.

I started by positioning the small terracotta pot which represents the vase for my bouquet of colourful succulent flowers.

Because I want my succulent planter to look like a painting, I centred my arrangement leaving a border to provide contrast. Sempervivums quickly propagate so my bouquet will soon expand with new, baby succulent plants.

I chose a combination of different sized and coloured succulents to be the ‘blooms’ of the bouquet. Once they were positioned, I added a couple of cuttings from a Sedum to complete my succulent art.

To complete my succulent picture, I top dressed my pot with some coloured aquarium gravel to provide a contrast. This step isn’t essential, but I do think it makes the plant colours pop and finishes the arrangement off.

I think a garden art planter made with colourful succulents makes a lovely gift. This arrangement already has pride of place at my mother in laws house. For some unique ways to display plants inside your home check out our Cute Square Pots for Mini Cactus Plants, our Air Plant and Wire  Jellyfish and our super-cute Mini Succulent Tin Can Planter.