sculptural succulents and Flora Grubb

I stopped in to Lowe's recently to pick up some batteries for the garage door opener. (Yes! The garage is now actually holding my car! For months and months, it was only a storage space for our furniture, other belongings, and miscellaneous construction supplies. We're still working our way through the remnants of the construction chaos, but half of the garage at least is now being used as intended.)

I got trapped in the store when an intense thunderstorm rolled in, so I spent the time strolling through the houseplants section and fell in love with all the charming varieties of succulents they had on display. Many of them had a beautiful sculptural quality, and the variety of shapes, colors, and textures was delightful. A few of them even made me laugh out loud with their quirkiness. (I'd swear one stumpy little oddity was actually a creature from an alien planet and not a living, growing plant.)

I'd love to fill a sunlit windowsill with a whole landscape of these plants, but there's no good location in our home. Instead I bought one little pot of mixed succulents to sit on the counter top in our bedroom next to a gorgeous white orchid (which I got half price when our local family-owned Ukrops grocery store closed down and converted into an -- in my opinion, inferior -- Martin's). The tiny succulent garden will stay there until I begin to see signs that it's suffering from lack of light, and then it will need to get moved outdoors.

Now that I have a few more minutes, I thought I'd head online and see what else I could find. A search for "succulents" immediately turned up the work of San Francisco plantswoman Flora Grubb, who owns and operates a popular garden store / coffee shop. And I realized right away that I'd seen and fallen in love with her work before. I spotted the following photo last year in Garden Design magazine, and I remember it sending me into a frenzy of Googling to learn more about "living walls" like this one. (For instructions on making your own wall of succulents, head over to Sunset. Or you can buy a kit online from Flora.)

But now I'm discovering Flora (and her partner Susie) all over again as a goddess when it comes to working with succulents. Here are a few more of the fabulous images I found on her website and blog:

For more ideas on playing with succulents, see this article from Lowes on creating succulent centerpieces, this Martha Stewart how-to on creating succulent wreaths, or this Cutting Garden Blog post from Flora Grubb Flowers on how to incorporate succulents into flower arrangements.