About This Stamp
In 2017, the U.S. Postal Service® introduced Green Succulent, a Forever® international rate stamp. This Global Forever™ stamp can be used to mail a one-ounce letter to any country to which First-Class Mail International® service is available. As with all Global Forever stamps, this stamp will have a postage value equivalent to the price of the single-piece First-Class Mail International first ounce machineable letter in effect at the time of use.
The stamp art features a photograph of an echeveria plant. Shot from above, the photo offers a close-up view of the elegant rosette pattern of the echeveria’s leaves.
Part of the stonecrop family (Crassulaceae), Echeveria — also its common name — is a genus of more than 140 species native to the Americas. Because echeverias are easily propagated and hybridized, there are numerous selections available to gardeners and collectors. Most echeverias grow in a rosette pattern, a circular arrangement of leaves that resemble a rose. The individual rosettes can vary from tight and short-stemmed to loose on upright or hanging stems. Leaves also vary in size, texture, and color, which might include blue, pink, purple, and red.
Echeverias produce flowers of various colors — cream, yellow, orange, red, pastel pink, or combinations of various hues — on tall arching stalks. The blooms, usually bell shaped, open in sequence rather than all at once. The blooming cycle can take several weeks, with new buds just appearing at one end of the stalk while others are already dying.
Popular plants for rock and container gardening, echeverias are also frequently used in indoor dish gardens.
The art director was William J. Gicker. The designer and typographer was Greg Breeding, who designed the stamp with an existing photograph by Erika Kirkpatrick.
Stamp Art Director
William Gicker
William Gicker served as Director of Stamp Services for the U.S. Postal Service from 2020 until his retirement in 2023. In that position he oversaw stamp development, stamp products and exhibitions, stamp manufacturing, stamp fulfillment, and the Postmaster General’s Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC).
Gicker began working for the U.S. Postal Service in 1998. Initially assistant editor of USA Philatelic, the quarterly stamp catalog produced by Stamp Services, he soon became editor where he oversaw the catalog’s award-winning program until 2013.
Named creative director of stamps in 2001, Gicker became manager and creative director of Stamp Development in 2015. Working closely with Postal Service art directors and CSAC, he managed the creative development and quality control of more than 800 stamp issuances and 1,700 individual stamp designs.
He has served as art director for some of the most popular stamps issued by the Postal Service: the five-year Art of Disney series; Star Wars; Holy Family; Harry Potter; and Hot Wheels. As both art director and designer, Gicker lists among his many stamps, Holiday Baubles; the first international rate Global stamp in 2013; and the Gifts of Friendship joint issuance with Japan. He was also art director for the first stamp to celebrate Diwali, eight more Global Forever® stamps, and several Christmas Madonna and Child issuances, the most recent in 2024.
A native of Pennsylvania, Gicker graduated from West Chester University with a bachelor of arts degree in English Literature. He and his family live in Washington, DC.
Stamp Designer and Typographer
Greg Breeding
Greg Breeding is a graphic designer and principal of Journey Group, a design company he co-founded in 1992, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was creative director until 2013, at which time he began serving as president and continued in that role through 2023.
Breeding’s fascination with modernism began while studying design at Virginia Commonwealth University. His affinity with the movement continues and motivates his ongoing advanced studies at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland most every summer.
As an art director for postage stamp design since 2012, Breeding has designed more than 100 stamps covering a diverse array of subjects, from Star Wars droids and Batman to Harlem Renaissance writers and the transcontinental railroad.
His work has been recognized in annual design competitions held by Graphis, AIGA, PRINT magazine, and Communication Arts.
Breeding lives in North Garden, Virginia, with his wife and enjoys nothing so much as frolicking on the floor with his grandchildren.