(Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) A few suggestions for beginners Haworthia Fasciata is a popular and easy-to-grow succulent indoors and out. Don’t put them in a spot you’ll regret later. Aloes and agaves can get really ginormous, he says. It’s also important, Shelf says, to know how big your plants will get. Some plants grow well in the winter and want a resting period in summer, while others want the opposite. A barrel cactus thrives in full sun all day long, Kemble says, but an aeonium will burn up if given the same treatment. Tephrocactus molinensis (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) Know your plants’ needsĪlthough we associate succulents with the hot, dry desert, not all plants can withstand full sun. Kemble recommends giving the plants a thorough soaking, then allowing the soil to dry out before watering again. Whether indoors or out, watering also is key. If you don’t have that, you need to amend the soil or plant in mounds of a soil mix formulated for succulents. Whether you grow in pots or in the ground, the soil needs excellent drainage. Soil is the most important consideration for succulents, Kemble says. The plants will try their best to capture all the light they can, which usually means your nice, compact plant grows leggy and oddly shaped. The main problem, Shelf says, is if you try to bring a plant that requires full sun indoors. Haworthia, some aloes and cactus make excellent houseplants. Many succulents can be grown indoors if placed in brightly lit rooms. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) An indoor garden Kemble and Shelf offer these tips for nurturing your own succulent obsession. Whether you want a tall, thin plant, one that will take over a corner of your yard, or tiny specimens perfect for a fairy garden, succulents provide. Shelf, who has written a best-seller, “Essential Succulents: A Beginner’s Guide” (Rockridge Press), says succulents offer something for everyone. All those people working from home have apparently become disenchanted with their décor and views and are looking for ways to brighten up their spaces with greenery. But the Bernal Heights store has branched out to offer personalized video shopping and, with the doors back open, is doing good business. Shelf briefly opened a second store at Ghirardelli Square, which was doing well until the pandemic lockdown forced its closure. “If you remain open to life,” Shelf says, “life will open to you.” As he phased out the video store and built up the nursery, eventually more people were coming in for the plants than the videos, and the store became official. One day while Shelf was on tour with a band, his staff called to say they had sold one of his succulent art creations for $500, and Shelf knew he’d found the future. He used everything he could get his hands on, including old picture frames that he backed with curtains and stuffed with growing medium and succulents. Shelf spent the quiet time reading and learning about succulents, improving his stock and making vertical art gardens. And over the next few years, it all unfolded exactly the way you know it did - until Shelf made what he calls the “ultimate pivot.” In the early 2000s, Shelf and his wife bought a quaint video store in their Bernal Heights neighborhood. It was a drought of a different type that led musician Ken Shelf to open his San Francisco nursery, Succulence Life and Garden Center. Kemble believes the current craze has roots in the realization that water-guzzling landscapes are just not sustainable in drought-plagued California. There are more than 60 succulent plant families and within each, hundreds and even thousands of different plants, giving the gardener a wealth of options. I like plants that are oddities, and there are plenty of these among the succulents.” Terrariums made with succulents are displayed at the Succulence Life and Garden in San Francisco. Another point of appeal is the endless variety of their forms: rosettes and columns and stacks of paddles. “You don’t have to depend so much on flowers for color, if you have leaves tinged with red or orange or pink or purple. “One of the things I find especially appealing in succulents is their array of colors,” says Brian Kemble, curator at Walnut Creek’s Ruth Bancroft Garden, a mecca for succulent lovers. But if you focused only on those things, you would overlook the ethereal qualities that appeal to succulent savorers - the beauty, the opulence, the singularity, the form and the structure. Succulents are fairly easy to grow, have the ability to survive on benign neglect and are perfect for our drought-plagued environment. Trying to understand succulents’ surge in popularity is a little like trying to explain why the sky is blue.
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