Trailing succulents are good choices for hanging baskets. Their fleshy growth stands up well in high winds, and the fact that they are succulents means they don’t wilt if they miss a watering.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that if they thrive, over time they and their pots get pretty heavy. If you use plastic pots with plastic hangers, like I have, you discover that plastic does not stand up well to the weight along with the sun and weather, and over time will weaken and break. I know this because in the last three weeks I have rescued two of my oldest pots, pictured below, which I found before all three of the lines of their plastic hangers had broken. They were dangling precariously from their remaining two lines, on the verge of dropping on top of various cactus dish gardens underneath them.

Another of my succulent hanging pots full of donkey tail sedum is really heavy and is at least as old, if not older than the ones that broke, and it is hanging from a wire hanger and shows no signs of crashing to the ground. And usually the wire hangers are on pots made of a more durable material, which is not a bad idea, either.

So I suggest that you use studier pots with wire hangers. They may not be quite as pretty as some plastic ones, but will be more durable for you. And the weight may not be as much a factor as the general deterioration of plastic in our heat, but why take a chance? Succulents are hard to repot without knocking off all their fragile leaves, so by starting out with a durable pot with durable hangers lets you skip that possibility in the future.

And after the succulent grows, it covers up the pot anyway. So there you go.