Its a useful place to start if we understand that Echeveria’s are succulent plants coming from pure desert conditions like a cactus. Most succulents have some part of the plant that is more than normally thickened and fleshy, usually to retain water in arid climates or arid soil conditions. Echeverias are natives of Central America and Mexico and grow best in desert conditions but cool desert conditions.

In many ways they are the perfect plant or for us to grow in a pot or container as they seem to positively thrive on neglect.
The reason that we need to grow most Echeveria in a pot in the majority of the UK or Europe is because they are absolutely not frost hardy at all and in fact even a light frost will cause a collapse and most likely will kill them, they very very rarely recover and grow back from their actual root’s.

Echeveria’s form a central rosette and from this you get smaller plants that grow out and eventually they can form quite large clumps which are easily propagated by removing the young growths and placing them in individual pots.

 

Growing Echeveria
They are really their most happiest in full sun and well drained soil.
The thing to remember with Echeveria is you need to let them dry out between watering, so if you’re unsure about watering then the most important piece of advice is don’t. When you water Echeveria, water the soil and not the rosette. Pour on the water until it drains out of the bottom. Repeat this a couple times. Then don’t water again until the soil has dried out,  also you actually don’t need to feed them as often as you would think, fertilizer is not a continual requirement for Echeveria. Succulents grow naturally in soil without a lot of nutrients.  Use a slow-release fertilizer at the beginning of spring, or a liquid fertilizer diluted 2-4 times more than normal and use less often than recommended. Use a low nitrogen mix or a cactus fertilizer. Remember that it is a lot easier to over-fertilize succulents than to under-fertilize..
When potting Echeveria’s I would always use a mix of 50% potting compost and then 50% either grit or sharp sand or perlite or a mixture of all three but still only making up 50% ratio. If I was using perlite it’s even more important to mulch the top of the pot with gravel because otherwise the white perlite will float to the top and this looks quite unsightly.
They also quite shallow rooting so for most species I prefer use pans or half pots because it’s pointless having a large amount of compost that the plant will make no use of and it  just becomes a reservoir for cold water

 

The commonest cause of death in succulents is rotting off between the roots and the rosette where it joins the soil and its really good idea to actually cover the top of your pot and underneath the the various leaves with horticultural grit to keep this area dry and stop stem rot.
Succulents are much better in  terracotta than plastic the simple reason is that they do get better drainage and you get more air around the roots, its why we use sharp sand as normal sand blocks the air spaces in compost and creates problems

Winter care
They will need to be protected from frosts in winter so the need to be brought inside and on the best place is really a greenhouse that is kept just above freezing. In the winter they probably only need watering about once every 6 to 8 weeks you can allow the compost to get really quite dry.

When it comes to the different colours of Echeveria  and Aeonium one of the things that I have noticed is that the more sun they get the better the variations of colour on the actual plant, and this Aeonium Schwarzkopf  (which means’Black Head’ in German) you  grow them in exactly the same way as echeveria.
Problems

Insects that do seem to find a echeveria’s absolutely irresistible are mealy bugs and aphids so you do need to keep a close eye out for these and if you see them neem oil spray which is 100% organic really does seem to get rid of them quite easily.