Succulents are all the rage these days, with their unique shapes, different colors and interesting textures. They’re intriguing plants often featured in home and lifestyle magazines as fashionable decorations that dress up a living space – indoors and out – demonstrating that you don’t have to live in the desert to enjoy these remarkable beauties.

Succulent dish gardens are becoming a new gardening trend.

Photo Credit: Altman Plants

Follow the recipes on the plant tags when selecting and planting your succulents.

Photo Credit: Altman Plants

Looking for a great housewarming present? A succulent container is a unique option.

Photo Credit: Altman Plants

The Chic Boutique™ display offers the recipes, main ingredients and instructions needed to create your own beautiful succulent container garden.

Photo Credit: Altman Plants

Meanwhile, dish gardens are becoming a popular container-gardening craze. They fit just about anywhere – from a small patio table to a long kitchen counter – and they work well with just about any décor.

Combine these two trends, and you’ve got more than just a nice container garden – you’ve got a recipe for fashionable success! The trick is just coming up with the right ingredients.

If you’ve ever wandered into the cacti and succulent section of a garden center, you’ve likely seen some amazing succulent dish gardens. They’re instantly filled with those wonderful little plants, and it’s so tempting to just pick one up, buy it and bring it home. But then you look at the price tag. Those impressive, professionally designed, premade dish gardens can be expensive. Yet if you’re not that familiar with succulent plants, you might be a little intimidated to try creating one on your own. (Or maybe you’ve tried re-creating a dish garden you’ve seen before, only to have disappointing results.)

But there’s now a new succulent program designed to help home gardeners plant and grow their own well-designed dish garden: Chic Boutique™ Succulents bring together all the ingredients you’d need to create a beautiful custom-made container all on your own – from pots and plants to container decorations. Different sample “recipes” printed on the back of Chic Boutique plant tags show novice dish gardeners where exactly to plant each type of succulent in the container, so it’s really pretty easy to do.

Here’s how it works: Icons on each tag (which match the icons in each recipe) list plants as being either “Focal,” “Structural” or “Textural.” All you’d need to do is follow the desired planting recipe by matching the type of plant with what’s in the design. (It’s like “paint-by-numbers” – only with plants.)

What’s more, the succulent varieties have been specially selected for use in a dish garden, and their tags are clearly labeled to help you to use the plants in the proper way according to each recipe. Just select one of the custom ceramic pots found on the display (or use one of your own) and start choosing plants according to what a recipe indicates. And because there are typically about six varieties available for each plant type (six different Focal plants, six different Structural ones, etc.), you’re able to create an intriguing, well-designed dish garden filled only with the plants that you like. By using all of the right ingredients and the recipe for putting it all together, it’s easy to create an attractive dish garden that has either a natural or a geometric look.

If you’re interested in creating your own trendy succulent dish garden, Chic Boutique is a great place to start. By following the instructions on the plant tags and picking the succulents that you like, you can be sure that your container creation turns into a garden “do” – as opposed to a fashion “don’t.”