Cormaic's garden - Plants

Garden Layout - Plants - Houseleeks
Houseleeks, Sempervivums, are often overlooked in their usefulness in a garden. They will literally grow anywhere and I use them in umpteen different awkward spots. They're even reputed to grow of certain rooves, eking a living from the sparse nutrients that can accumulate on a rooftop.
Mrs Taz has a wooden trough, 300mm square and only 100mm deep, planted with a mixture of varieties along with stonecrop and mosses, which looks good for most of the year. We're planning to expand this into a bigger feature when we get the chance, possibly by using the now-defunct Belfast Sink that provided a home to Mrs Taz's Goldfish prior to their removal to the Pond. In the summer of 1999, the first ever flowers from a houseleek were spotted in this trough. I was pleasantly surprised that such a plain looking plant can produce such lovely and interesting flowers.	Houseleek in Flower
There's also a good few of them used to fill a gap between the pond and the path that leads to the shed and greenhouse. This is an awkward space, tapering from 150mm wide nearest the gate, down to zero against the pond, a distance of perhaps 1.2m. I've planted sempervivums into individual hand-thrown clay pots, and rammed these into the gap, filling the spaces with an angular gravel., but leaving the pots between 25mm and 100mm proud of the paving.