Succulents are fun and hardy plants that don’t require a lot of maintenance or water. If you’re thinking about planting succulents in your yard, you definitely need to read this tutorial on how to plant succulents.

This guide on how to plant succulents contains affiliate links, but nothing that I wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend anyway! Read my entire disclosure here.

Happy Labor Day! Hope everyone is enjoying their day off! Logan and I have been working on the big home renovation this weekend (much like all of our other weekends). We’re making some progress and starting to paint the back bedroom and the master bedroom FINALLY! Can’t wait until we can move our bed out of the living room and into the master. Logan’s mom is coming to visit next weekend, so we made that our deadline and have been trying to get those rooms painted so we don’t all have to sleep in the living room together! 🙂 I’m sure Gannon wouldn’t mind going from bed to bed though.

How to Plant Succulents

Last week I shared with you about our Dark Mulch Miracle and how we completely transformed our flower bed the easy way. I mentioned that I would tell you how we transformed that little circular flower bed on the side of this picture. When we were sprucing up the flower bed, I decided to turn this into a succulent planter. So I decided to share with you how to plant succulents.

So, here’s where we started.

Just like everything else, weeds and more weeds. I didn’t really now what to do with this planter at first. And I thought it would make a perfect little succulent garden. I know, I know I just talked about about high desert landscaping last week and how important it is to plant native plants. Let’s just say I don’t really think that the succulents will make it much longer than the next couple months (not because of how I planted them, but because it’s about to get real cold and real wet in Bend for winter).  

As I explained last week, we are only called a desert in relation to the amount of rain that falls in Portland. We’re at the base of some beautiful mountains and end up getting quite a bit of that mountain town snow. Succulents don’t do well in the snow (or any excess moisture really), but they are great for the summer here and I love them so I decided to give them a try.

(UPDATE: 2 years since I wrote this post, the chicks and hens are still going strong, but the other succulents all died during winter. The chicks and hens just made it through the most brutal winter we’ve had in 30 years, so they are definitely hardy succulents!)

Related – If you love succulents, you’re going to love these succulent centerpieces. What a fun way to bring the succulents inside! 

Step 1. Remove soil from bed and create bed of drainage.

When you’re planting succulents, the single most important thing is that you have adequate drainage. To achieve this, I started with digging most of the soil out of the bed and filling the bottom with pine cones, rocks and Perlite. This helps create a shallow bed for any water to sit so it’s not sitting in the soil or the roots of the succulents.

Step 2. Back fill planter bed.

Then I began filling back in the dirt I had originally removed and added in Perlite and new potting soil to the native soil. I used about 1/2 native soil, 1/4 new potting soil and 1/4 Perlite. Another good alternative is to add sand to your soil.

Step 3. Plant succulents.

I followed this by adding in the fun little succulent plants once I got to the top of the planter.  When I removed the succulents from their plastic pots I opened up the roots a little with my hand and then just planted like normal.

Step 4. Cover with river rocks.

Lastly, I covered the bed with river rocks. I think this gives it a really fun and classy look.

Easy as that! Hopefully this guide on how to plant succulents with help you as you create a succulent garden at your home. I love the way succulents look! Be sure not to over-water succulents. That is the easiest way to kill them. What other tips do you have for planting succulents?

Looking for more tips about growing succulents?

My friend Emily at Sproutabl made this awesome infographic about how to grow succulents! Enjoy!