How to Display Ornamental Cabbage & Sedums

The bright purple and green leaves of ornamental cabbages grow well alongside other cool-season plants like pansies and snapdragons. The clumping rosette of each plant looks most dramatic when planted in multiples and spaced so the leaf tips barely touch. Hot weather causes cabbages to bolt, or send up lanky flower stalks. Sedum or stonecrops on the other hand, are perennials and display their upright or sprawling foliage in summer and fall and persist after the fall frost. Sedum plants remain in the same location year to year, but annual ornamental cabbages are planted to fill in bare soil in the garden for an attractive fall-to-spring display.

Things You'll Need

Shovel or hand trowel

Large decorative container

Instructions

- 1
  
  Stonecrop grows either as upright or low sprawling plants.
  
  Prepare an area in the garden that accommodates all the sedum and ornamental cabbage plants. Both types of plant need at least 6 hours of direct sunlight daily, ideally all-day sun. Avoid shady areas or soil that remains soggy after rains or irrigation.
- 2
  Place the tall-growing plants in the back of the garden bed with the lower-growing types in the foreground. Keep the plants in their containers since you are only moving plants around to create a design. Upright, clumping sedum cultivars, like Autumn Joy, can be planted in a cluster with the shorter ornamental cabbage in front of it. Alternatively, if you have the low, groundcover sedum plants, plant them in front of the taller ornamental cabbage.
- 3
  Remove the positioned plant containers from the bed once you know the design you want. Often a small soil depression or print remains in the soil to guide you to dig planting holes in the correct location to create your design.
- 4
  
  Upright stonecrop flowers in late summer and fall, attracting insects.
  
  Dig planting holes for the taller plants first, which are deeper into the planting bed. Once planted, the top of the root ball must rest even with the top of the soil; don't plant too deeply or shallowly. Space the taller plants so there is between 5 and 10 inches between the plant edges. This allows for continued growth of plants after planting so they do not become so quickly over-crowded.
- 5
  
  Ornamental kale, like cabbages, look dynamic in a clustered mass.
  
  Plant the shorter foreground plants last, making their planting holes large enough to accommodate their root balls, planting them the same depth in the soil as they grew in their nursery containers. Space them uniformly so 3 to 6 inches of bare soil remains after planting. This allows room for the plants to grow larger without making your planting design look cramped and overgrown.
- 6
  
  Insert stonecrop and cabbage into garden containers for seasonal effect, too.
  
  Place extra sedum and ornamental cabbages in larger decorative containers. Use the same formula of taller plants in the center or back of the container with shorter plants in the foreground or container edges.

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