Sometimes the answer to your gardening problems is right underneath your feet – or easily could be if that answer is the Lemon Ball Sedum. We don’t recommend walking on it too much, but this terrific groundcover plant will carpet the hottest and driest parts of your garden like a golden lawn – and never need mowing. It’s fabulous carpeting and foreground plant that is also incredibly easy to grow, so take this ‘yellow (brick) road’ to a successful solution for those drab, dry areas that we gardeners just hate. It grows just a few inches tall, but one plant will cover a couple of feet and more, forming a tight, weed-resistant mat that changes through the seasons from golden yellow in spring to lime-yellow in summer and then to orange-red in fall and winter. It is also a great pot plant in hot zones. Always bright and always undemanding, it’s a splash of golden happiness no garden should be without.

Growing the Lemon Ball Sedum

Size and Appearance

The Lemon Ball Sedum forms a low mound of trailing stems that form a neat, round ball of foliage. The stems are perennial, and they stay thin, only thickening and forming a light gray-brown bark when they are some years old. New stems sprout up constantly, so this plant never thins out in the center or leaves bare patches. It soon forms a mound 1 or 2 feet across, but only 4 or 5 inches tall. The trailing stems root as they grow, so the spread is potentially great, but the roots are shallow and easily pulled up where you don’t want it to be. The slender, almost round leaves are about ½ inch long, with a pointed tip that isn’t sharp or spiny – this plant has a pleasant feel to it. The smooth, fleshy leaves tend to form rosettes at the end of the stems, as they grow. New leaves, especially in spring, are bright lemon yellow, turning more yellow-green during summer. Sometimes there are flashes of orange highlighting the leaf edges, and the cooler nights of fall often turn the whole plant a terrific orange-red, making it look like a completely different plant. This plant is evergreen, and that orange coloring lasts all winter, brightening the dull days. In the hottest zones it may remain yellow-green all winter, with just a little orange developing.

Between late spring and through summer, clusters of tiny, star-shaped, yellow blooms appear. These give a bright boost to the yellow foliage color and really make your planting sparkle. They are attractive to pollinators and butterflies too. The leaves are also edible, and add a tangy crunch when scattered across a salad.

Using the Lemon Ball Sedum in Your Garden

Although it will grow perfectly in richer, damper soils, and is a good way to carpet the foreground of beds or edge paths and terraces, it is most valuable in drier areas where other plants can’t survive. It will grow in a few inches of soil – over rocks for example – and in the cracks and crevices between boulders and walls. Use it to carpet slopes, cover rocky areas or to fill rock gardens, Plant it around manhole covers or on old brick or concrete coverings to hide them. Grow it in baskets and pots for plantings that won’t mind not being watered for periods of time. When you have areas where other plants have failed because of heat and dryness, the Lemon Ball Sedum is your colorful solution.

Hardiness

The Lemon Ball Sedum is very heat-resistant, thriving in zones 7 to 10. It grows in areas with rain and humidity, and in arid regions as well, thriving anywhere winters aren’t too cold.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

The Lemon Ball Sedum will have the best coloring and bushiest growth when grown in full sun. It will grow in partial shade, but needs at least 4 hours of direct sun each day. In partial shade it will be more lime-green, and often won’t develop the orange tones much. As for soil, don’t worry, this plant grows in anything that isn’t wet, including urban soils, rocks and gravel, and in anything that is well-drained.

Maintenance and Pruning

If you like low-maintenance, you will love the Lemon Ball Sedum. It really needs nothing, and it isn’t bothered by pests or diseases at all. Deer and rabbits leave it alone too, and you can pretty much ‘plant and forget’. After a profuse flowering you might want to give a light trim to remove the brown spent flower heads, but it isn’t essential. To keep it more compact and limit the spread, trim as hard as you want in spring, pulling up extra stems – it will soon sprout back and be thick and dense again.

History and Origin of the Lemon Ball Sedum

There is a lot of confusion about the parent species of this plant. The best information is that it is a variety of Sedum mexicanum, a species that grows wild in Florida, Mexico, and Central America. It is sometimes listed as a variety of Sedum rupestre, a hardy European species, perhaps because there is an old variety of that plant called Angelina, which looks very similar. It is possible that Lemon Ball is another name for a plant released by Proven Winners called Lemon Coral®, but that isn’t for certain either. We also don’t know where this plant originated. Sorry for the lack of information, but we do know this is a great garden plant!

Buying the Lemon Ball Sedum at the Tree Center

The Lemon Ball Sedum is one of those plants you wish you had known about before – but now you do, so don’t pass it up. This bright little guy will light up your beds and dry areas like nothing else will – but order now, because the beauty and ease of this plant always makes it a great buy, and quickly out of stock.

such a great little plant you will wonder how you ever gardened without it. There are so many places in every garden where it will thrive and look perfect, so don’t hesitate – order now while our stock lasts.