My favourite garden flower is the Mesembryanthemum, an annual that needs resowing every year. They are very easy to propagate but you need to be careful not to sow too thickly or too close together as they are almost impossible to separate and thin out. My advice is to sow them in small clusters in small pots of sowing compost, then when ready, you can transplant the whole lot as a clump! They grow very close to the ground and have no stem other than a very thin strand that goes into the soil and the roots. The plants look like they are succulents due to bladder cells that glisten like ice crystals, and this leads to their common name often used ….. Ice Plants.

It is the profusion of flowers that will reward you across the whole summer either in rockeries or at the front of borders, right on the edge and where they cannot be overshadowed by larger plants. They need full sun to open, and really sparkle in so many different colours before closing up for the night.

Posted here as part of Cee’s FOTD Challenge

Categories: Photography

Tags: colour, flowers, FOTD, garden, gardening, natural world, nature, Photography, plants