Last year I decided to make a sedum garden. At first, the plan was to make a garden on the garage roof. It seemed like a good idea at first, the surface is slightly tilted, and the view from my balcony is perfect. But, then we started thinking it better and gave up on this idea. 

The main reason for giving up on this idea is the forest next to my house. The forest is actually an abandoned orchard that hasn’t been cleaned in over 25 years. The owners have died, the inheritors don’t care about the land, and now we have a forest of tall and huge trees next to the yard. The trees of course flower, make fruits, and grow and lose leaves like any normal tree does. During this process, they cover my side yard in petals, pits, fruits, and leaves. If we did build a garden on the garage roof I’d need to clean it at least once a week, and that’s just something I can’t do alone. I’d need my hubby to do that, and he’s already too busy with work. I don’t want to give him another yard job. Instead of the sedum garden, I decided to buy a climbing plant and cover the garage with a climber. It will be easier to clean the garage with one big plant. Also, pruning will be done only once a year, and that’s something I can manage on my own. 

After solving the garage issue there was only one problem left. I’ve already started buying sedums for my new garage garden and now I had a bunch of sedums at home. I had to find them a place where they would be visible and have good conditions.

Sedums and houseleeks aren’t difficult to grow, they usually like all conditions and any type of soil. The roots aren’t too big or go too deep, so they can be grown in almost any pot. Some can even grow almost without any soil. I could place my sedums anywhere, only if my garden wasn’t next to the forest. One thing sedums don’t like is a combination of wet and frost, and that’s something almost half of my garden gets lots of. For this reason, I’ve been growing sedums mostly in pots or concrete containers, and I’ve never kept them planted directly in the garden. The only place in the garden where I could plant them is the retaining wall under the house, but I have different plants in mind for this part of the garden, so I had to find a new place for my sedums. After lots of thinking, I finally decided where I’ll plant my sedums: I’ll turn the house wall in our side garden into a sedum hanging garden. 

Our house doesn’t have finished exterior walls. This might seem weird and odd in some countries, but in Ex-YU countries this is perfectly normal. Our laws don’t require us to have a completely finished house for the building to be considered “ready to move in”. They are considered finished once the exterior walls are covered with a facade, but once the building is considered 

finished you’re not allowed to do any significant work without a permit, so a big percentage of the homes, especially the ones built between 1980 and 2010 don’t have finished exterior walls. We have internal insulation and the houses are fully functional and maintained completely just don’t have a facade. Here houses are built through generations. Grandparents start building them, parents continue and kids finish the houses and the facade is something that is made last. We’ll make one eventually, but not in the next couple of years.

 

 This is why I decided to make a hanging sedum garden. The house wall in the side garden is already covered in part with my huge ivy plant. But the plant is growing very slowly, so most of the side is bare. This is why covering the wall with hanging sedums will eventually look very nice. Especially once the whole wall is covered. 

We have to start somewhere, so I asked my hubby to make me some new wood planters from the wood scraps. As I said many times before, we decided to use all the wood left from the demolition and that’s why I don’t plan to spend any money on new planters. Also, I think plants look better in wooden containers than in plastic ones.

Hubby made me the first 6 planters which I’ve filled with some of my sedums and houseleeks. Right now they look a bit empty, but sedums will fill the planters soon, and the planters will be almost invisible.

There are still some sedums left which will be planted in the new containers after we finish the steps and the side garden. I’m not certain if I’ll need big containers or small individual ones. I’ll see what will look better.

My hubby hung a bunch of hanging hooks on the wall, and the hanging sedums have been placed. They actually look very nice and will look even better once the steps are finally finished and we clean the walls and concrete. We’ve hanged them following the terrain and all of them are at eye height, so you can easily see them. 

I will buy some more sedums and we’ll start filling the wall from the bottom to the top. Someday the whole wall will be covered in different sized planers and full of different sedums. I will also propagate the existing sedums to have more plants for new planters. 

While I was planting the sedums I also transplanted my tiny cypress tree. I’ve kept it in the balcony container during the winter, waiting for the new garden to be built, and now it was time to move it to its new place. The small cypress will like it here. This is a dwarf variety, so it will never grow too big, and I’ll shape it into a nice ball once it gets big enough.

Once the sedums have been moved, my balcony containers were empty so I had to do something with them. I’ve filled them with cabbage seedlings for now. I have ordered some annual balcony flowers, which will make the balcony pretty during the summer, but for now, the containers will look ok with the seedlings.  The balcony is tall enough and far enough from the road so that you can’t really see the seedlings. The containers look like they are full of green plants and that’s enough for now. Also, the empty containers came at a great time, at least the lack of space was temporarily solved.

I hope the sedum garden will grow nicely in the new spot, the collection will keep on growing.