Vertical Succulent Gardening Tutorial

All over Pinterest are examples of vertical succulent gardening.   Check out my Gardening/Outdoor board for some really unique ideas.  I saw one that used an old window frame.  Most of them used picture frames, but I had had this window frame in my garage for a couple years that I bought for 5.00  and I knew it would be perfect for this project.

I bought some hardware cloth at Home Depot.  I know Lowe's sells it as well.  It comes packaged like this and is found in the fencing department.  It is a 3'x5' piece for $12.00.  I have more than half of it left if I want to do any other ones.  They did sell it in smaller amounts.

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We laid it on the window frame and stapled one side down and then cut the other side.

We then used a staple gun to staple the cloth (not sure why they call it cloth when it's clearly wire)  to the inside of the window frame.

We took a left over piece of wainscoting from our banquette seating project and cut it to fit the window frame and then nailed it to the frame.

We drilled some holes in the back for drainage.

Next I took it to the barn to paint.  I wanted it shabby so put a light coat of paint on it.

Add the dirt.  Caution, don't pour too much dirt on the hardware cloth at one time or it will pull the staples out.  This happened to me and I had to get a pair of scissors to slip in a hole and hold it up while smoothing the dirt in the holes.  It will save you a lot of work doing it slowly. The size of my window frame took almost 2 bags of compost.

Next I went on a succulent hunt around my yard.  To do this project at this size would cost a lot if you had to buy your succulents.  One succulent at Home Depot was $2.86.  We have 8 large rock garden walls that have lots of different varieties of succulents that I pulled some plants from.  My mother also sent me home with some starts of hers on our recent trip to Florida.  My suggestion to get succulents for free or inexpensively is to post an ad on your local free cycle asking for some.  I did this last year for perennial starts and received several responses.  You could also hit up your local library plant sales or plant swaps.  Or even post an ad on Craig's list.  Anyway, you start placing your succulents into the small squares.  I used a pair of scissors to poke the plants into the hole if they were too big to add using my fingers.

The window frame has to lay flat approximately 4 weeks for the succulents to root.  Once they have rooted you can stand it up.  By  Memorial Day weekend I should be able to show a picture of it up and hopefully spreading. One great thing about succulents are they grow in any kind of dirt, they spread pretty quickly and don't require a lot of water.  Happy Planting!!

UPDATE:

Here is my garden after 8 weeks:

For a tutorial on the simple DIY bench that holds my vertical garden you can go here.

To get the Free Summer Subway Art print found above the garden please go here:

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Enjoy!