Sedum is one of the most widely distributed succulent genera in the nursery trade, and almost every gardener has more than one reasonable source within easy reach. What changes between sources is range, quality, and provenance. This guide covers where to look and what to check.
Part of the Complete Sedum Guide.
Specialist cactus and succulent nurseries
The best source for anything beyond the commonest garden cultivars. Specialist nurseries stock true-to-name species, unusual cultivars, and often propagate their own material from verified mother plants. Plants are usually sold as young specimens in small pots and cost more than a garden-centre equivalent, but the identification is reliable.
Members of national cactus and succulent societies publish directories of affiliated growers and specialist nurseries:
- In the UK, the British Cactus & Succulent Society (BCSS) maintains a list of affiliated growers and a calendar of branch plant sales.
- In the US, the Cactus and Succulent Society of America (CSSA) lists affiliated vendors and regional society sales.
- In continental Europe, national societies (Germany's DKG, France's Société Française de Cactologie, Belgium's Interessenge Succulenten) maintain equivalent directories.
Society plant sales, held at branch meetings and national conferences, are probably the single best way to source unusual or named-clone sedums. Growers bring material from their personal collections, often in propagation forms not found in the general trade.
General garden centres
Reliable for the widely grown garden types: 'Autumn Joy', 'Matrona', 'Dragon's Blood', 'Angelina', 'Lemon Coral', and the SunSparkler series. The plants are usually larger and better developed than specialist nursery stock, and prices are keen. The limit is range: you will not find species sedums, wild-form S. cauticola, or named H. telephium subspecies on a garden-centre bench.
Check for:
- Firm stems and leaves with no soft black spots.
- Moist but not waterlogged substrate.
- A label that gives a cultivar name or species (not just "sedum mix").
- Roots visible but not pot-bound through the drainage holes.
Avoid plants with mushy basal stems, strong chemical smell in the substrate, or visible mealybug in the leaf axils.
Mail order
Many specialist growers ship bare-root or small-pot plants across national borders. Sedums travel well: the fleshy leaves tolerate several days in transit without damage, and bare-root mat-formers are routinely sent as small rooted fragments in damp tissue.
Points to verify before ordering mail-order:
- Phytosanitary regulations in your country. Post-Brexit the UK requires phytosanitary certificates for most EU plant imports; US-EU trade has similar constraints.
- The grower's propagation history. Seed-grown Hylotelephium cultivars do not come true; named clones must be vegetatively propagated.
- Shipping season. Avoid deep winter (cold damage) and peak summer (heat damage) where possible. Spring and autumn are safest.
- Return and replacement policy. Any grower refusing to replace a plant that arrives rotten is not worth the saving.
Green-roof and landscape suppliers
For quantity. Sedum mats, plugs, and shredded stem material for extensive green roofs come from dedicated growers who propagate on a commercial scale. The cultivar mix is standardised (usually S. acre, S. album, S. reflexum, S. spurium in varying proportions) and sold per square metre or per tray. Not useful for collectors but the right choice for a project covering 10 square metres or more.
What a healthy sedum looks like on arrival or purchase
- Firm foliage with the cultivar's typical colour.
- No pale or stretched new growth (an indicator of shade-grown greenhouse stock).
- No black spots or soft patches at stem bases.
- A root system visible through the drainage holes but not matted and circling.
- No insects in the leaf axils or on the flower heads.
Reject or return plants that do not meet these criteria. Quality sedum stock is not expensive, and a healthy plant establishes within weeks while a damaged one takes a season or fails.
Avoiding dubious sources
Online marketplaces list "rare" sedums at commodity prices with stock photos that do not match what ships. Most of these are misidentified S. rubrotinctum, S. pachyphyllum, or unrooted fragments passed off as established plants. If a price looks too low for a rare species, it is. Source from a society grower, a named specialist nursery, or a reputable garden centre.