See a Succulent Tidepool Terrace Amazing tips

A terrace near an outdoor sitting area is perfect for a colorful, easy-care succulent garden. This one in Laguna Beach, CA, suggests a tidepool. When you visually immerse yourself in it, you might as well be snorkeling. I discovered it on the Laguna Beach Garden Club’s spring Gate and Garden tour.

Like many gardens in Laguna, this one is multi-level.  After the owners restored and remodeled the 1920s beach cottage they bought in 2014, they reconfigured and replanted the garden. This prominent terrace became a whimsical, colorful focal point that enhances the view, indoors and out.

Succulent Tidepool Terrace ~ Key Aspects

Succulent tidepool terrace fountain

• A fountain infuses the area with the splashing water, thereby muffling the outside world.
• A tile backsplash, which continues along the length of the wall, is glass in shades of blue and aqua green with a shimmering iridescence.

Rock retaining walls 

• A retaining wall of rounded granite boulders and concrete suggests beach rock and sand. This low wall also doubles as seating for the adjacent patio.
• Succulents that suggest undersea flora lend continuity to the design. Among them are slender, upright sanseverias (snake plants), Senecio vitalis, sedums, bottle palms (Beaucarnea recurvata) and Portulacaria afra ‘Minima’.
• In the bed, softening the visual impact of a structure beyond it, is a dracaena tree. Its slender multiple trunks appear to undulate.

Golden jade and sansevierias

• Colorful succulents that enhance the composition also include echeverias, graptoverias, trailing crassulas, shrub crassulas such as golden jade and silver dollar jade, aeoniums, and Kalanchoe fedschenkoi.
• Weatherproof fish tucked amid the succulents lend animation and interest. Find comparable ones online (affiliate link).

Fish look at Senecio stapeliiformis. The blue is lobelia (not a succulent). 

• Nonsucculents that contrast with vivid fish include blue lobelia and burgundy coleus and cordylines. The latter echo the dark rusty hues of one of the terrace’s inhabitants: a metal sea serpent.

Echeveria, sansevieria, ceramic eel

• Sea-themed accessories include chunks of slag glass, large shells (some planted), a ceramic eel, and my personal favorite: a small pirate’s treasure chest filled with small silver bowls and large glass jewels.

Treasure chest

Nancy's Nearby Mermaid Garden

According to owner Gabriella Rice, “The person whose vision, design and labor made our garden what it became was Joe, my husband.” Sadly, Joe passed away in 2019.

Laguna garden club past-president Nancy Englund helped Gabriella prepare her undersea terrace for the tour. Nancy’s own mermaid garden is renowned. Do enjoy my video of it:

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Twelve Common Succulent Landscape Mistakes Amazing tips

As a succulent garden design consultant, I typically see about a dozen common landscape mistakes. Correcting them is often simple and makes a big difference.

12 Succulent Landscape Design Mistakes

Do any of these apply to your garden? If not, applause! Please share your own tips and suggestions in the Comments---I'd love to hear them!

1. Dead stuff

This doesn't belong in your personal Eden. Removing dead limbs and deadheading spent flowers are instant improvements.

2. White that yells "Look at me!"

No "color" stands out in a garden more than white. Something plastic and utilitarian is often the offender. If there's no way to remove it, spray-paint it. Ever noticed? Over time, dead limbs and foliage turn white.

Five-second solution: I made the white irrigation cap disappear with brown spray paint.

3. Cute crap

I feel mean mentioning this, but faded flags, platitudinous signs, chipped plaster squirrels, and garlanded bunnies are ghastly. The only excuse is if a sweet child gave them to you. Or they're made by Meissen.

4. Unsheltered dining areas

If a table is out in the open, chances are you won't use it. IMHO, the best "roof" is a tree canopy. Next best: sun sails.

Inexpensive sun/shade sails are available from Amazon (affiliate link).

5. Contempt for jade

Hey, there's a reason Crassula ovata is so common. It's a great low-maintenance, low-water shrub. See my live video: Debra Defends Jade Plant (4:04). It's a fave. Comments include, "You do stand-up comedy?!"

6. Not enough repetition

We gardeners want one of everything, but the most soothing aspect of any landscape is repetition. Without it the eye moves jerkily throughout the area.

Play up the powder blue of certain succulents by repeating their startling color with blue fescue (Festuca glauca). Notice contrast here too: the wispy grass contrasts with the bold, dynamic shape of Agave parryi 'Truncata'. 

7. Lack of contrast

Good design needs contrast for interest and drama. Colors, sure, but also texture---hard and soft, smooth vs. nubby. For example, contrast agaves or aloes with feathery ornamental grasses.

Pots in Hannah Jarson's garden illustrate the design principles of scale, repetition and contrast.

8. Eyesores

Due to familiarity blindness, you may no longer notice a neighbor's junk (or for that matter your own). However, guests do---at least subliminally.  I know you've been meaning to plant a hedge or install a screen.

9. Too many too-small pots

It's all about scale. Areas like your home's entry need big pots, not a cacophony of wee ones. Consider large planters as an investment that enhances your architecture. What to do with all those small pots? See my video: How to Group and Display Potted Succulents (9:46).

A large red pot contrasts in form and color with Agave attenuata in Patrick Anderson's garden.

10. Pancake-flat plantings

Great, your lawn's gone! You needn't make the new garden level. Bring in soil and create mounds and swales. And boulders! See my video: Why you Really Need Rocks (5:32).

Above: Could this be any flatter? One wonders if a steamroller were involved. Below: A newly planted mounded succulent garden. Design by Michael Buckner for Carolyn Schaer. 

11. No nursery/potting area

Most of us need a holding place for new plants, cuttings, tools, containers, fertilizer, bags of soil, etc. An underutilized side yard with a hose is ideal. Add a potting bench, shelves and shade.

My own nursery/potting area has Texas privet along the west side pruned to create dappled shade for succulents awaiting a home in the garden.

12. Weeds

Not only do they look awful, but being pure evil, weeds WILL reseed. Pull 'em early, and spread an environmentally friendly pre-emergent herbicide before the first winter rain.

How did you do?

Is there something I should add to the list? Please leave your suggestions in the Comments below.

Find more helpful ideas on this site's Succulent Landscapes page.

Above: What do you think---did I take my own advice? See my own half-acre garden in spring.

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