by Chris Winslow
With water conservation in mind, I am always on the look-out
for drought tolerant additions to my landscape, and a few years
back I came across the wonderful sedums.
Commonly called ‘stonecrops,’ sedums are a large grouping of
low-growing, flowering groundcovers in the Crassulaceae family.
Sedums (pronounced 'see-dums') store water in their leaves, mak-
ing them drought tolerant and a fine addition for sun to part-shade
locations in xeriscape gardens.
With over 400 species in this rather large family of plants, sedums
come in a wide array of flower colors, leaf colors, and textures.
Most are under 6 inches in height.
One of my favorites is dragon’s blood. With the proper light ex-
posure, this low groundcover puts on a show of brilliant red
foliage with red flowers in the late spring and summer. And when
the cool weather of fall arrives, the leaves turn orange-red.
Sedum anjelica displays golden-yellow leaves with a tinge of
green – almost like lime. This trailing groundcover creates
yellow flowers through the summer.
Sedum tricolor has green and white variegation with red along
the leaf edge. Drought tolerant and spreading in form, it displays
tiny pink flowers through June and July.
Another pretty variegated (green and white leaf) sedum is lineare.
This beauty grows to a height of 4 inches and makes a dense mat
of foliage with bright yellow flowers.
These stonecrops are perfect for our climate. If you are looking
for a flowering groundcover that’s drought tolerant, thrives in
poor and shallow soil, and flowers, then this is a perfect choice.
Sedums are easily grown in pots and baskets, often cascading
off the edge. They make great additions to mixed succulent
plantings.
Also as more people experiment with living, green roofs, many
are finding sedum to be preferable to grass. Ford’s truck plant in
Michigan has 10.4 acres of sedum on its roof, and the Rolls Royce
factory in England also has a vast sedum-covered roof.
P.S. There is a native stand of sedum along the rock outcroppings
on Oak Grove road skirting Elliott Ranch. In the summer, these
succulents turn yellow for a month or two, amazingly with less
than a half an inch of soil. Happy gardening everyone!
