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A Succulent Makeover With Chic Boutique

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Large Pot
Photo Credit: Altman Plants
Succulent dish gardens are becoming a new gardening trend.

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.

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.)

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Chic Boutique Display
Photo Credit: Altman Plants
The Chic Boutique™ display offers the recipes, main ingredients and instructions needed to create your own beautiful succulent container garden.

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.)

Facts
  • You can find Chic Boutique™ Succulents at your local Lowe’s garden center.
  • In addition to the plants and containers, Chic Boutique™ offers four different types of garden “toppings” (either sand or pebbles), as well as ceramic garden decorations for an extra finishing touch. (You can choose from a white shell, brown Buddha, tropical green frog and different-colored ceramic fish.)
Tips
  • Chic Boutique™ plants don’t have to be used in dish gardens – the larger plants, for example, can be used for other projects, like planting a rockery or special area. The four-packs of succulents can also be used for the crafty among us who make succulent topiaries, spheres or wreaths.
Faqs
  • Q: What’s the difference between Focal, Structural and Textural plants?
    A: Focal plants are intended to be the focal point of your design. They’re larger and taller than the other succulents and include aloes, aeoniums and euphorbias. Structural plants tend to mound. Examples are sempervivums, crassulas and echeverias. Textural plants are low and sometimes trailing. They include sedums, senecios and small crassulas.
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