Planting succulents in my backyard

I’ve never planted succulents in the ground. My only experience is planting them in pots. I used pots because we had an apartment with a small balcony. Pots are great for that. Then we bought a house mid-2021. The house we bought has a backyard with a raised garden bed. I envisioned it as the perfect place to plant succulents!

Now it’s February 2022. I held off on this project because I’ve never planted a garden before. However, my husband has done loads of garden work before as his parents used to live on a fully landscaped one-acre property, and gardening was one of his chores. So he jumpstarted me by loosening the soil, adding an amendment, and mixing it together. (The soil where we live tends to be clay-heavy).

In addition to that jumpstart, we recently picked up some free river rocks off Nextdoor Finds (like Facebook Marketplace) to decorate this raised succulent garden bed. Therefore I started with prepped soil and some placed river rocks:

There were two succulents I was enthusiastic to plant:

1. I purchased this large Echeveria Cante a while ago. (You can see it in the above photos next to my kneeling pad). When I saw it at the store, I knew I wanted to plant it in my backyard. I feel like it would thrive more in the ground than constrained in a pot. (And it would need a large pot).
2. Since I’m obsessed with Nextdoor Finds, I saw someone posted that they were moving. They were giving away their succulents and put them out on the curb. When we got there, most of them were already gone! So I was happy to grab this one! I knew it (mostly the Graptosedum ‘Francesco Baldi’) would be great for this project! I am happy to give it a new home. I love repurposing.

I planted all the plants in the garden bed within a few hours. My process was:

1. First I dug out a hole for the succulent.
2. I put the soil from the hole into a container. In that container, I mixed perlite in with the soil. It was up to 50% perlite and 50% soil. Disclaimer: I eyeballed this. Also I live in a dry climate. We’re always in a drought and don’t get enough rain. Succulents here can survive in less than 50% grit.
3. Next I took each succulent out of their pot.
   1. If the soil looked gritty and in good shape, I kept some. I do this because I want to reduce the shock to the plant. I do gently remove some to make sure the roots won’t be stuck in the shape of the pot. I usually see gritty soil from succulents I bought at nurseries.
   2. If the soil was too organic, compacted, or looked bad (one had some fungus), then I removed the the soil from their roots and tossed that soil. I usually see organic soil used by big box stores.
4. Then I placed the succulent plant in the hole.
5. Lastly I filled in the hole with the soil and perlite mix.

Here’s what I planted:

Here’s the final reveal:

To be honest, I’m underwhelmed with how it looks. I thought I planted a lot of succulents and large ones at that. It looks sparse, and the succulents look small. However, I know that they will grow, and I am still happy I did it. I do have some more succulents to add, and I will be posting more updates on my raised garden bed!

Let me know if you have any questions on how I planted this or if you have any suggestions for me!