syngoniums:

These planters at the front of the yard also did fairly well, though they’ve accumulated a lot of leaves and other debris. There are empty spaces in the pots left by plants that did succumb over winter, so I’ll be cleaning that junk out to see if any stems or leaves survived.

The big plants are graptoveria ‘Fred Ives’, which is one of the best plants of this kind for my area. It tolerates the summer heat very well and is reliably hardy to at least 25F/-4C, though it will be killed by the coldest freezes we get here in zone 8b. It goes through a variety of color changes over the course of a year, which is particularly dramatic in its crested form. If you have trouble keeping echeveria-type plants alive in your climate, give this one a try.

I’m also pretty pleased with sedum ‘Bertram Anderson’, the dark purple plant in the bottom pic. I’m going to prune it back to try and get it to fill out the pot a bit more. Sedums with less succulent leaves than, say, Sedum adolphii tend to get pretty rough-looking in our summers, but I’m hoping this one can buck that trend.