Remember those succulent cuttings I showed you last week? Well, here is what I did with them! I decided to create a living frame. It ended up being a lot more work than I thought, but in the end it was worth it. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I’ve pretty much spent all my gardening budget so I tried to make the frame cost as little as possible. It is helpful when you have extra things leftover from other projects or when you know people who do. I was able to get wood for free by dumpster diving again. My parents had leftover hardware fabric (wire mesh) from building a dog run several years ago. All I had to buy were screws and soil. Oh, the frame was from a project I made at the Snap blogging convention where Poppy Seed projects did a demo. Here is a step by step with photos, although I missed a couple steps.

First I cut all the wood to the sizes I needed. This took quite a while because I didn’t have quite the right tools for all the cutting I did. You could also buy wood at Lowes or Home Depot and I think they will do a few cuts for free so that would be a quicker easier option. I also cut a piece of mesh to go on the front of the frame. Once I had everything measured and cut, I stapled the mesh to the frame. The mesh will help hold everything in the frame. A lot of tutorials I’ve seen use spangham moss between the mesh and the soil. This is supposed to really help keep the soil in. I opted to not use it for two reasons. One, I didn’t want to buy it (one less expense) and two, think because the frame won’t ever be completely vertical. So we’ll see what happens.

I then used the wood pieces to build a shadow box on the back of the frame.

Then I screwed a piece of plywood to the back of the frame.

Flip it over and this is what it looks like!

Then I filled it with succulent soil.

I then leveled it out and watered it to compact the soil as much as possible. I kept adding soil until it was full and very compacted.

Once that was done I started putting the cuttings in! I tried to group similar colors and contrast textures and shapes. I’m not sure how much larger these will grow, although I know they will grow. Because of that I wasn’t sure how close together I should plant them. I tried to leave a little bit of space between each of them. Eventually if they start to get to big I’ll take some leaf cuttings or something to that extent.

So, overall I think the living frame turned out pretty well! The back isn’t super pretty and it isn’t all perfectly flush but I actually think that will help with the drainage. Now I’ll leave the frame flat for several weeks so the cuttings have time to properly root and then I’ll stand it up in my window well garden!

I'd love for you to check out my eBook all about propagating succulents! It covers in depth how to propagate from leaves and from cuttings. Click here for more information or click below to purchase the book.

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