daily news and photography about cacti and succulents
and some california natives too
"Drolly entertaining and informative at the same time." CSM
We are expanding the gift selection at the nursery to include bird hooks and squirrel pots. Yes!
Bird hooks. We hang little planters off them. They work well with Tillandsias too and they come in Squirrel hooks too. Yo. Now please be sure to understand that we only add these as pure nursery goods. You won’t see us use these hooks for coats. No. Only for hanging plants and plants and other plants too.
Well played! This self watering squirrel in a log pot. We put a fern on top for fun. Fun.
Difficult to weed when there is a Morning Dove nesting in the tray of Cacti…
Elliot has gone rogue. Look at what he’s done.
Succulent Birdhouses
A closeup of one of them
And a closeup of the other of them. By the way this one is on one of our new Rusty Iron Stands, handmade in Napa Valley.
The Echinocereus grandifloras are in full bloom this weekend, so you know it’s spring out here at the Cactus Jungle.
We call this one “Amber Peach”
Rikki insists this one is “Tropical Pink”
I named this one “White Lightning”
In case you were wondering, these are all hybrids. They are intergenic hybrids between Echinopsis and Echinocereus. You may see these on various websites and at certain nurseries under various and sundry names. Some call them Trichocereus Hybrids or Lobivia Hybrids or Tricho-Lobivia Hybrids, however current taxonomy puts all Trichocereus and Lobivias into Echinopsis.
You may also see in certain quarters where they insist on particular cultivar names. However we have gotten our original parent plants for these hybrids from the original hybridizer and he does not name them himself. So we are free to call them by our own cultivar names. If you have better names for them than we’ve come up with, we’re happy to take suggestions!
Friday Whippet Blogging (Plant Edition)
Aeonium “Whippet” is our own cultivar from Aeonium atropurpureum. It looks a lot like A. “Schwartzkopf” this time if year, but it us lower growing, faster growing (hence the reason for the whippet name) and much branchier too.
We have another new product out at the nursery – Ceramic Eggs by Jennifer Fisher, a ceramicist working around the corner from us.
Rikki potted a little Sempervivum, i.e. “Hen’s and Chicks” in the egg. So cute.
A special purchase we have right now. Made in the Bay Area, down in San Leandro.
They look good with the tall cacti. Sweet!
4th Street, Berkeley
Delospermas in bloom
OK, so this isn’t just any Succulent garden in Berkeley, it’s the front bed in front of the store. Our address? It’s on Fourth Street. So there. Prove me wrong!
ITS OUR ANNUAL
March 16 – 31, 2013
30% OFF ALL
Terra Cotta Pottery
NEW STYLES FOR 2013!
It’s an African Violet, i.e. Saintpaulia, in a beautiful piece of wood.
Brian adds the finishing touches on a custom mixed pot for a customer.
Nice!
A new blue succulent terrarium is out at the store. I’ve been following some succulent feeds on Instagram and have been inspired to use brighter, more vivid colors in my terrarium designs.
My eyes! Too bright! Tone it down!!!!
And it’s layered below? Wow!
Here’s Rikki’s latest mixed succulent pot, in one of our Urban Farmgirl’s hypertufa pots.
Not really a pot, though, more like a race track of plantings.
Nice!
A lot of our shrubby Euphorbias, i.e. the Spurges, are blooming right now or coming into bloom soon enough. While not strictly succulents, they are very drought tolerant and can easily mix in a succulent garden.
Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii
And just for fun, here’s one blooming succulent spurge – so many Euphorbias are succulent, and this one is succulent:
Hoya kerrii
We’ve got ‘em, you want ‘em – stop by, doncha know. Happy pre-V-day!
That’s a Dimetrodon about to nibble on a Lithops.
Bad dinosaur!
The Aloe speciosa’s blooms are coming along nicely. This particular bloom spike should last a couple more weeks.
Don’t call them Bandaids.
Would you buy a pack of Cactus Band(ages)(aids) from a cactus store?
If so, would you pay $5.99 for a pack? What if I told you they came with a free toy inside? Would you buy it then?
I mean from us, a cactus nursery, not from a drug store or a toy store.
It’s been a weird day today. That’s what we get for living in the city of Berkeley.
Here, have a dinosaur in the garden.
