Easy, DIY vertical succulent garden

Vertical succulent garden by Vera Devera (c) 2012

If you're planning a wedding with succulents, I'm sure you've seen lots of inspiration for vertical succulent gardens. I'm hosting my own birthday party in a couple of weeks and that has motivated me to get our backyard in shape.

First thing on my list: salvage a pallet and turn it into a kickass garden. And that's just what I did!


Materials:

• 1 salvaged pallet (i.e., rescue an abandoned pallet off the street, usually outside a warehouse or store)
• Burlap
• Upholstery staple gun
• 3 cubic feet of soil
• Compost
• Lots of plants

You can follow the tutorial at Life on the Balcony, or you can do what works best for you. I basically stapled the burlap to the back (at least 100 staples) and around the sides and bottom of the pallet. Then with the pallet laying flat on the ground, I worked from the bottom up filling the pallet with soil-compost. The first row was comprised of sedum (best to buy a flat of ground cover sedum at Home Depot for $14), the next row was heirloom Bull's Blood beets with coleus and lamb's ear, followed by a row of petunias and more coleus and ecchevaria. I topped off the vertical garden with more beets, oregano, thyme and other varieties of petunias.

This is a great backdrop not only in your backyard, but I can see it used as an escort card display, especially for a garden wedding. The cards can be "sown" into the soil with wooden seedling markers Or it can be a cool architectural feature as part of the setting the scene for your succulent-themed wedding.

Easy budget DIY succulent centerpieces

I've got a private dinner party coming up and I thought I'd make my own centerpieces using succulents and found objects. I bought salvaged wooden boxes ($3 each) that I turned upside down to create a platform and spray painted the insides of short sundae glasses ($1) with a $3 can of berry pink spray paint. The succulents were about $1.97 to $5.99 a pot at Home Depot -- fortunately, succulents are very hardy and can be cut and eventually regenerate their roots so I didn't have to buy very many to make these (I just took pieces from a handful of pots). I'm pretty excited to display these! What do you think?

Fiddling with my centerpieces

Our reception hall has doors that open up to the garden outside and I wanted to bring a bit of the garden inside. While Guitar Fred and I don't have a garden, we do have lots of succulents in pots and glass vessels at our apartment. 

I've always loved the look of succulent terrariums. I planted these succulents in October and they're beginning to bloom. The plant on the right is a trailing oregano. What's missing in the photos are the vintage white milk glass -- which I'll fill with a head of hydrangeas.

I've been looking at orange pintuck linens for the tables. For your centerpieces, are you going for a single, tall/short vase arrangement, or something clustered like below?

{Photos by Vera Devera}