Hi I'm Debra Lee Baldwin author of three books about succulents and how to use them in
containers, gardens and landscapes and this video will introduce you to succulent ice plants. This
is the time of the year when they are so stunning they're just searing and glorious and gorgeous.
Succulents with shimmering multi-petaled daisy-like flowers are generally referred
to as ice plants or mesems which is short for mesembryanthemum. Don't assume the term
ice plant refers solely to carpobrotis also known as pickleweed or hottentot fig.
Carpobrotus is invasive along the California coast and I don't include it here.
Ice plants you'll see here are massed with neon bright flowers in spring.
I'll show you the main ones and how to beautifully use them.
You can also find all of them labeled on the ice plant page of Debra Lee Baldwin dot com
along with any companion plants that I also show. Keep in mind that all ice plants need full sun to
bloom. They make good ground covers when they're not blooming but it does seem a shame to not enjoy
their flowers. Here's a street side planting with the flowers closed and then later in midday sun.
Flowers may take several hours to fully open in the morning. They'll close back up on a cloudy
day. If you're allergic to bees or don't want bees in certain areas of your yard like near your pool,
know that masses of flowers are bee magnets. Fortunately most ice plants finish blooming by
summer. The best ice plants for California gardens are primarily species and cultivars of Lampranthus
and Drosanthemum. You don't have to know their names,
but do try to buy them when they're in bloom so you can see what you're getting.
Drosanthamum floribundum or rosea iceplant has been a popular ground cover for generations,
sometimes used to cover entire hillsides. Now you can do that if you want to but just know
wherever there's a gap, weeds will grow. You can't walk on it to pull weeds or to add more plants.
What i've learned over 30 years of growing various ice plants is that they look best
and are easiest to care for when combined with other succulents and low water flowering plants
as i'm about to show you. When spring blooming annuals and perennials mingle with ice plant
you get living bouquets. This variety also illustrates how ice plants got their name.
Look closely at the leaves and you'll see they glisten as though coated with ice crystals.
One of the first ice plants to bloom in spring is Lampranthus productus
commonly called purple productus. Here it is in combination with blue Senecio mandraliscae.
When you have orange gazanias or orange poppies growing with purple productus
it's about as bright and brilliant a combination as you'll get.
Here the yellow is another succulent in bloom, Bulbine frutescens.
Soft looking mounds of ice plant make a pleasing texture contrast and backdrop
for bold succulents like agaves. Succulents with green or yellow-green leaves like this aeonium
and this backlit jade plant also marry well with purple productus. Flowering perennials
like these osteospermum daisies need more water than succulents, but ice plants are usually
fine with extra water especially if they're on sloping terrain. Here's purple productus
with gold Lampranthus aurantiacus. We'll just call it gold ice plant. And also with orange
ice plant Lampranthus azureus. Gold and orange ice plants look amazing with similarly colored lantana
and with red-orange flowers of aloes. This ice plant is blasting into bloom behind these aloes.
Now this is Aloe virens. It stays small and you have the orange with the orange-yellow which just
is a show stopper. But when you think about it, how easy is that? Really, just to plant
low-growing aloes that come into bloom at the same time that the ice plant does. No-brainer, right?
Bouquet-like combos often are accidental like this gold ice plant with annual sweet alyssum.
Here's sweet alyssum with rose red lampranthus and purple statis, and this is what happens when you
add gold lampranthus to the mix. One cultivar name for rose-red lampranthus is 'Hot Flash'.
This might possibly be the prettiest combo yet: gold lampranthus with 'Hot Flash'
Lampranthus deltoides is ornamental even out of bloom. Its pink flowers look a lot like those of
rosea ice plant, but the leaves are blue-gray and the stems are reddish pink. Lampranthus
deltoides is useful as a filler plant in container gardens and window boxes as well as in the garden.
If you love red, have I got a hot ice plant for you: Drosenthemum speciosum.
This is how it looks alongside a friend's driveway in spring.
The red edges on the aeonium transform this accidental combo into a work of art. Another
great pairing in terms of texture and contrast is red ice plant with blue gray Agave americana.
Here's red lampranthus in a lower light situation alongside Agave americana 'Mediopicta alba'.
When ice plants grow in dappled rather than full sun, flowers tend to be sparser with longer stems.
Here's red ice plant with orange gazanias. You know people ask me,
what do i recommend for a ground cover and I often tell them Lampranthus 'Lemon.'
It's a tough trouble-free gap-filler that blooms off and on year-round. Here's Lampranthus
'Lemon' in a friend's garden. I like how it repeats the yellow of the variegated furcraea
at upper right. Not sure if that was on purpose, but it works. So I hope you've enjoyed
our tour of succulent ice plants, the sparkling, dazzling, brilliant-colored succulents that you
can add to your own garden. I'd love to hear from you. Please leave your comments and questions
and check out the corresponding page of my website on ice plants at https://debraleebaldwin.com