Succulents are easier to handle, though some of the agaves have sharply toothed leaves. Crassulas make good tree-like subjects for a desertscape.

C. argentea, the jade plant or money tree, could be combined with an aloe such as A. humilis, the hedgehog aloe, which is predictably very spiny, or with one of the echeverias, which make nice rosettes of fleshy, sharply tipped leaves. Sempervivums are not dissimilar in shape and

S. arachnoideum, the cobweb houseleek, is covered with a netting of fine cobwebby hairs. Among the sedums you can have S. morganianum, which grows down like a donkey’s tail, or S. rubrotinctum, the jelly bean plant, which looks just like that. Senecio rowleyanus is the string of beads plant, which grows tiny strings of green beadlike leaves. Lithops are pebble-like plants that are fascinating in themselves and very much more so when sporting their large daisy flowers. Read the rest of this entry »

Cacti and succulents are not hardy enough to stay out of doors throughout the year but will always benefit from spending the warmer months out in the air and sun. They are perhaps the most misunderstood of all plants. Somehow the myth has grown up that they can live indefinitely without water and this is what many of them must, perforce, do, usually in some ill-lit corner of the house where nothing else would be expected to survive. But water them correctly—not at all between December and March, then one good soaking every three or four weeks until June, followed by weekly watering and even daily spraying—and you will see them in a new light. Neglected specimens from indoors or, even better, well-cared-for plants from a nursery can go out on the window sill in late May or early June. Again, fill the box with gravel, settle in a nice rockscape and plunge in specimens still in their pots. Decorate the scene with finely crushed gravel. Read the rest of this entry »