The guy I work for, Don, has a great garden design method that is known as 'put and look'. It's simple enough: just put the potted plants (still in their pots) where you plan to have them, then stand back and see how they look. If you don't like that look, move them around until you do. That's usually a doddle to do with seedlings, baby shrubs and saplings, but with a 10-year-old, 2m tall curry tree in a large, heavy pot it was strenuous going. Enough complaining, here's how 'put and look' worked out.
The curry tree used to be on the 'far right' of this photo, just behind
the money tree (ie, a crassula) on the right. Before moving the curry
tree I had to lean it on its side and use tree loppers to cut through
the thick roots which had grown through the bottom of the pot and
no doubt were halfway to China. Rolling it around to its new spot
took a while, too, but it's good morning work, curry-tree-rolling!
No doubt the curry tree will settle into the soil, develop a lean and
need propping up, but it already looks bigger and happier in this more
open spot. As I have cruelly cut off its tap root it will no doubt
lose some leaves and sulk a bit, but I am hoping that the magic of
regular seaweed solution (Seasol) treatments plus the mildness of our
winter will encourage the roots to grow again. We shall see.
The money tree is staying where it is. For a while I entertained the
foolish idea of moving it, but it's staying where it is, and the curry
tree is the one to move up the lane.
I showed the full story of this gardening crime last posting. This was
once a potted plant but its roots found their way into the soil, the
plastic pot burst long ago and this had grown into a beast with
an anaconda-thickness trunk. Somehow I think moving it might be
somewhere between impossible and fatal, probably both. So ugly
as it is, but with a story to tell, here it resides.
In between the curry tree and the money tree is this person, Crassula
argentea 'Coral', a charming weirdo for whom I have quite a soft spot.
Love the chunky trunk, and the oddball foliage.
Here's a close-up of its foliage, which is, depending on which leaf
you examine, either hollow at the end or deeply dimpled. This isn't
a photo taken today, by the way. It's on taken back in 2008, when
this was a far healthier, happier and sunnier personality.
Here's the 2008 plant. Compare this dense foliage on this far younger
tree with the relatively sparse coverage on today's tree, two photos
above. I am sure this is purely due to a lack of sunlight, as the rescued
plant has been heavily shaded by both the grevillea and the rosemary
which have now both gone to that great compost heap in the sky.
So this is the humble site of stage 2 of the makeover (stage 1 was
clearing out all the unwanted stuff and having it carted away). I still
want this to be a succulent bed, but not with everything in a difficult-
to-manage jumble of pots. I want to create a succulent bed. At this stage
I'm thinking of laying two courses of bricks around the bed, and
filling this with a 50:50 mix of sand and soil mix, so it's very
free-draining, the kind of soil that succulents love.
Here's the old 'succulent city' back in 2008, and a happy jumble of
plants it was, too, and I would like to maintain something of the colour
and spirit of this potted gaggle, but without the pots.