It’s not hard to love succulents when they look like this–a nice compact bowl full of color, variety, and joy.
But as I have posted about before, succulents rarely stay so nicely compact for long. This bowl was purchased only a month or two prior to the first one I showed–& already it’s getting leggy and ready for its first pruning.
You may recognize some of these succulents from a post I did about a month ago, where I showed the whole bowl after a drastic pruning. But notice the stem on the echiveria in the back of the photo–the plant whose stem looks all scarred? That’s where leaves have fallen off as the plant has grown up. That’s absolutely normal for this plant–but it’s also why this some plants in this species tend to get so leggy and need redoing on a regular basis.
Then there are others whose growth habit is just normally “legginess.” This plant is naturally a trailer. I actually have it in a hanging pot with the hanger removed because I don’t have a good spot to hang it. So it’s growing a bit oddly.
So long as you know what to expect from your succulents, you will be much happier with them!
Gardendaze 
You might find this to be interesting. They were used as illustrations for one fot he Sunset – Western Garden Book editions a few years ago. I was not there when they were constructed: https://tonytomeo.com/2018/02/25/foliar-tapestries/
Those are amazing, Tony, thanks for sharing. Here in this climate we don’t do anything like that. I have seen some pretty succulent shadowboxes, as i would call them. They were actually framed with wooden frames. Obviously for indoor or maybe a covered porch in the summer, which is where mine go. With the 16 inches of rain we have had this summer, my succulents would have washed away by now.
Karla