Sempervivum Collection, 8 Pack

Alpine Sempervivum Collection: Mix of 8 in 1 Litre Pots

These delightfully collectable, low growing little evergreen succulents gradually spread to form a dense mat that covers the soil and wedges itself into rocky crevices.

Each plant is a rosette of thick, fleshy leaves that sprouts clones of itself. These clones, called offsets, eventually fill the place of their parent after it flowers and dies, which takes several years, depending on the conditions (three or four is typical). They come in a range of sizes and colours, which always look good jumbled together.

Browse our mixed alpine collection, our alpine wildflower collection, or all of our alpine plants.

Delivery season: Alpine collections are delivered in pots year round, when in stock.

As with all our mixed collections, we cannot accept requests for specific combinations of plants. This means we can offer the best price, and we do our best to pick a range of plants that look good together. The image above only an example: the mix that you receive may differ.

Features:

• Pack of 8 different Sempervivum varieties
• Mix of attractive, succulent foliage rosettes
• Ideal for rockeries & containers
• Can grow in walls & on roofs
• Hardy little evergreen perennials
• Unique ground cover
• Thrive in poor soil
• Low maintenance

Growing Alpine Sempervivums

These hardy mountain plants hardly need any attention once they are settled in. Full sun is ideal, although a little shade is fine. They require sharp drainage, so gritty soil that never gets waterlogged is necessary, and you can mulch the surface with a further layer of fine grit to keep their outer leaves off the soil surface. The classic place for them is in rockeries, pots, and dry-stone walls, and they are a staple of green roofs.
Drought tolerant when established, they should never need watering after their first year, or possibly the second if they are growing on top of a wall. A light liquid feed once a year with a balanced fertiliser (NPK 7-7-7 is perfect) will help them spread faster, and encourages flowering.

If you have clay soil, your best bet is to grow them in pots, rockeries and raised beds to keep them up off the damp earth, but you can try building ridges and mounds of clay and grit for them at the highest, sunniest points of your garden.

Some people winter their potted sempervivums indoors, which does tend to help them grow faster. The purpose of this is to protect them from excessive moisture, not cold, so an unheated greenhouse is ideal.

Please note: If you receive your plants in late autumn or during winter, it is better not to plant them outside until the weather warms up in Spring. They won't establish well in cold soil, and there is a small risk of them failing as a result.

In Your Garden Design

Sempervivum have becoming very popular as green roofs; the roof of a bike shed or bin store is a great place to admire them. A potted collection of different leaf shades and shades on an outdoor table brings an air of insouciant French chic.

Did You Know?

Sempervivum species, nicknamed Semps for short, are always, semper, living, vivum, both in the sense of being evergreen and the sense of being very tough and able to grow in inhospitable places such as rocky mountainsides: covered in snow part of the year, sun scorched the rest of it. Among their many other names are houseleeks, rabbit cabbage and St Patrick's rose. They are among a diverse group known as "hen and chicks", due to the way that they asexually propagate, with several little babies, or offsets, sprouting from and crowding around the mother plant.

In Wales, they protect you and your house from lightning when they grow on your roof. The crushed leaves of some varieties have mild antimicrobial properties and are soothing for small cuts, mild burns, or insect bites: similar to, but not as good as, aloe vera.