DIY Vertical Succulent Garden

It is 2018 and one of my goals this year is to start a blog to chronicle my various projects. This blog will mostly feature handmade clothing and accessories. However, I enjoy many DIY pursuits and the picture to the left is of a vertical succulent garden that I made a few months ago.

My husband is a skilled woodworker and built this frame out of mahogany. Hardware cloth and landscape fabric keep the dirt in place. I used a succulent/cactus potting mix and cut holes in the hardware cloth and lanndscape fabric to insert the plants. A backing of plywood was then attached to the back. Tubing to connect to our irrigation system comes up from the bottom and spans the entire width horizontally at the top. (Sorry, no pictures because I was not blogging at that time!) The frame measures about 3 ft x 3 ft. It is mounted with L-brackets on the top and bottom. Here are a few photos of the process:

The succulents were planted in mid-October of 2017 and the entire planter was left horizontal for 3 weeks. Below you can see the difference of just a few months:

October 2017

January 2018

While I was planting this larger garden, I also planted a few smaller ones, some of which made nice Christmas gifts. The driftwood I found while tide-pooling at some nearby beaches:

Thanks for reading my first blog post!