Care and Maintenance of Pollinator Friendly Sempervivum
Important Tips for Establishing Sempervivum in Portland, Oregon
Sempervivum (hens and chicks) in N Portland front yard
Plant them in a well draining soil. They will tolerate our clay top soil as long as it is not in a low spot where water collects. I find adding a half inch of a tiny gravel on top of the soil between the plants every year is very beneficial and may speed getting the plants to multiply into a colony. Don’t bother planting them in heavy compacted clay. They will rot. Don’t put the tiny gravel at the bottom of the hole. They will rot.
Water them once a week the first summer until they are established and a little extra water during very hot weather is a good idea. Be sure to reach down, press and feel the soil, don’t guess, so you don’t over water and rot them. Their 2nd summer you can water them less. After several years they typically survive without much or any irrigation.
Prevent Flowering Until Plants Mature and Have Lots of Chicks
It’s better to buy with chicks already in the pot but they are rarely available like this.
It is important to cut the flowering stalk off the first year or two. The hen will send up a flowering shoot and then produce seeds. This exhausts the hen (the center rosette) and it will die, which you cannot afford until the plant has created offshoots e.g. the chicks! This problem is made worse because what you buy is typically a 4” pot with a single hen in it and no chicks.
Hens and chicks can be planted next to concrete in sun but there is a limit to how much sun and reflected heat.
Prevent flowering by cutting the flower shoot down low in the leaf rosettes until you have lots of offsets to carry on the work of spreading to create a ground cover. This takes two to three years before you have enough offsets or chicks to carry on. The shoots can be quite insistent so you may have to cut that flowering stalk off more than once in a summer.
If the hen flowers without giving you any chicks you will not have a plant at all come the next spring. In other words…you will not have any plant there come spring if you lost the hen. You may remove the center plant, also called the hen, if it is declining. Once the chicks are actually rooted you can gently cut out the (hens) center plant. I do this primarily for looks. The colony looks better without the dead foliage of a declining hen. Here’s a fun link for propagating hens and chicks.
Pink flower clusters are what you get when a sempervivum flowers. (NE Portland parking strip)
Support Pollinators
Once your colony is established you can let your hens and chicks flower to support pollinators. You will have to tidy up by removing the dead center rosette so the chicks can grow over the hole the next year. I used to cut all of my flowering stalks out of the rosette (or hen) but now once I have enough of them… I let them flower to feed bees.
Low Maintenance Plant for Portland
Here is your takeaway – Sempervivum Hens and Chicks is an easy low maintenance plant that takes lots of sun and little water is needed for it to thrive. It looks great in the winter because it is evergreen and has fantastic texture to contrast with other low non aggressive plantings. If you are new….It’s more fun to play with plants when they don’t die. If you already love plants you will love playing around with Sempervivum so it’s a great plant for everyone.
Contact Us
Sempervivum is an easy and pollinator friendly plant for our Portland climate. We love to create landscape plans that are pollinator friendly and can support any of our bees, butterflies or birds. Contact us if you want a pollinator friendly landscape design that is interesting, colorful and can be an asset to your home and neighborhood.
