About
A bench,
not a brand.
There is no editorial team, no studio and no affiliate department. There is a bench under a window in Zone 9b, about a hundred pots, and a notebook that has been kept since 2016.
The nursery wall we buy from, November. Most of the collection starts here as a 5 cm plant.
Why another succulent site
Because most of them are written for a climate that does not exist. A rule like "water once a week" is true in Tucson in April and false in Manchester in December, and the plant does not care which blog it came from.
This one is written from one place, and says so. Zone 9b means mild wet winters, dry summers, and four months where the window delivers less light than an overcast day outside. If you live somewhere else, the principles hold and the timings shift — every guide tells you which part is local.
The collection is deliberately small. Eight species, because those are the eight that have survived nine winters in this room, and a plant that survives is more useful than a plant that is rare.
See the eightThree pots on a rented windowsill
Two echeverias and a haworthia, all three watered weekly, two of them dead by March. The notebook starts as a list of mistakes.
The first winter that nothing died
The year the pots moved off the glass and the watering stopped in November. Forty plants through to spring.
A bench instead of a windowsill
Twelve feet of south-facing bench, a scale, and a rule: one variable at a time. The species notes become useful.
Written down properly
Six guides, eight profiles, six buyer's guides. Still one bench, still the same notebook, now with photographs.
Method
How a thing earns
a recommendation.
It lives on the bench for a season
Pots, mixes and cans are used with real plants for at least one growing season before they are written about. A tool that annoys us in week two does not get a paragraph.
It is compared, not admired
Two mixes, same plant, same window. Two cans, same shelf. Where we cannot see a difference, the guide says so instead of inventing one.
It is described by what it does
Not "premium materials" but "unglazed, wicks water, dries in four days in July". If a claim cannot be observed, it does not go in.
Write to us
Questions, corrections,
and photographs of dead plants.
Corrections are welcome and get published. If a guide is wrong for your climate, say which one and what happened — that is how the notes improve.
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