New member from the UK.

Good Afternoon, everybody,

I'm John, I'm 66, a retired engineer, and I live in Staffordshire, about 50 km North West of Birmingham, and I'm very new to Sempervivums.

I've a friend, a lady who is slightly disabled, and she moved from a house to an apartment last year.

Unfortunately, she has no garden where she lives now, so I said that she could put her plants in my garden.

There wasn't many, a small hydranga, which was only two years old, so it was easily dug up, and moved, an azalia, and a rhododendron, both in large tubs and some fuschias, in pots, they went in my small, unused, greenhouse.

There were also two large dishes of sempervivums, plus a few more in pots - they were outside at her house, so they have been outside since last May, here, too.

Recently, I started to look a bit closer at them, because the two large dishes were not well drained, and they were getting waterlogged.

I'd no idea what sort of conditions they need, so I looked it up, where I look everything up - on the Internet!

Then I discovered that they don't like to stand with their feet in water - and I also found that the two large trays, don't have Sempervivums in them at all - they are Rosularia!

So I put a piece of glass over them, to help them to dry out a bit, and I re-potted the Sempervivums, and put a little collar of grit around them, to make them look smart, and I moved them into the greenhouse.

Now, none of these Sempervivums have names, but I'd read quite a bit about them on the Internet, and by this time, I wanted to know more, so my friend and I took a ride to a nursery that advertised them - just to take a look of course.

We were not going to buy any, we just wanted to look - and we drove away with eleven new ones in the back of my van!

Nothing unusual, an Octopodes, a "Longshanks" [he was an extra one thatr the lady at the nursery gave me, because I had bought 10], and several others.

Several have now been potted up into bigger trays, because they were full of "chicks", and the chicks were hanging over the edge of the pots.

They are all very nice, I'm looking forward to getting some more in due course, I had a spare greenhouse, that I was given about ten years ago, and I've started to put it up this week, to house others, [it came without glass, so I now have to save up some money for glass]

That's about it, I think, for now, I just need to send my thanks to Renata for sorting out my membership to the forum,

Regards to you all

John in Staffordshire, UK

John, - I hope you'll enjoy the forum!

There's another John from England here ...