By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

If a big, beautiful Italian glazed pot tips over and a big chunk breaks off, first you cry.  Then, if you're Olivia Sellards, you turn it into opportunity.  Sellards, a talented young staff member at Ron's Lifestyle Nursery in Grover Beach, said the idea of using small blue Echeveria to repair the breach in the wall of the broken pot came to her in her sleep.  "I could hardly wait to get to the nursery and try it out," she says.  The Echeveria's companions in the finished piece are Aeonium, Mexican blue fan palm, dwarf banana, purple Heuchera, chocolate cosmos, blue hair grass, and salvia.

Below is another example of Olivia turning a lemon into lemonade.  When several panels in an Edwardian case shattered, she decided to remove all the glass, converting the case from a mini-conservatory to a giant planter.  The Aloe polyphylla, the succulent with the dramatic spiral shape in the foreground, is the star, but it has lots of showy company, including canna, dwarf kangaroo paws, Calibrichoa, Heuchera, Salvia, and lots of succulents. 

And, finally, here's clever Olivia.

Bold beauties: how to design with succulents