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.
To make a good desertscape you will need a variety of shapes and sizes in cacti and succulents and a few pieces of matching and fairly dramatic looking rock. Rocks should be jagged rather than softly rounded; think of your average Western and you will get the picture. Sand is obviously the right topping for a desertscape, and if you can get hold of different coloured sands and ones that are compatible with the colour of your rocks you can have a lot of fun laying them out.
The plants themselves will need more than sand in which to grow. If your cacti and succulents remain in their pots these will come to no harm if lightly covered with sand. Feeding is rarely necessary as most plants will need to be repotted in spring after their winter indoors.
Both cacti and succulents are easy to root from cuttings and these can be used to provide the variation in size that a good landscape needs. Whole sections of pads, or perhaps a slice of a pad, can be taken any time in summer when the plant is active. Cut edges should be left to dry out for a few days, or even weeks, before planting in a very sandy compost. Rooting can take place in a week or two orafter as long as several months, so don’t throw out any unless they look really shrivelled or rotten.
If you want cuttings to take while still contributing to the overall scene you will have to offer them a better medium than pure sand or gravel. Perhaps the best method would be to sink thumb pots of good cactus mix (sold as such by nurseries and garden centres) into the base gravel and let the cuttings root through the sand into this richer mix. When the time comes to break up the landscape and bring the plants indoors for the winter, you can lift the rooted cuttings out without disturbance and grow them on for another day.
Sedums and sempervivums, however, are often hardy and grow outdoors all the year through in dry walls and rock gardens. If you incorporate these in your plan you can leave them in situ all winter, simply removing the more delicate specimens for overwintering indoors. In this case, fill the box with gravel to a rather lower level and provide atop couple of inches of good sharp-draining soil. You can still plunge pots into this and finish them off with sand, and the sedums and sempervivums will have a little nourishment in their year-round stations.
Once you get bitten by the cactus bug, and have become immune, as you eventually do, to the cactus spine, you will find seed a highly satisfactory way of germination and the young plants, which don’t look
acquiring new stock. Use the special cactus seed compost sold by garden centres and cover this with a layer of fine sharp sand. Sprinkle the seeds lightly and water them in with a fine mist spray so as not to disturb them. Warm water (at least 68 °F) helps
a bit like fully-grown cacti, should stay in their original seed tray for twelve to eighteen months before being transplanted. This is mainly because they object to being disturbed when young but it also allows the slower types to germinate.
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