Right: Cactuses come in multitudes of shapes and forms.


Below: A strawberry pot turned succulents showcase.


Above: Echeveria planted in pea gravel - simplicity and easy care.


Left: Sedum and Echeveria used to create a mosaic.


coloured vessel highlighting a fluorescent- ly flowered cactus are all guaranteed to get a second glance. Look to create geometric patterns with the varied shapes and colours of these plants. Busy homeowners and gardeners have


to love these plants, because they are so easy to grow and take so little care. Once planted outdoors, you can forget them because they will look after themselves. Indoors or in containers, they need infre- quent watering – in winter, as little as once a month or two depending on the size of the container – and little fussing. You can plant succulents in the hottest,


driest, stoniest part of the garden and they will thrive. If planting in containers, mix your potting soil with some sand, vermicu- lite, or perlite to improve soil porosity and drainage because succulents don’t like standing in wet conditions. Be sure your container has adequate drainage holes. Yucca plants and aloe vera are two oth- ers succulents you may not have thought


about. Yucca filamentosa and Yucca glauca are both hardy to zone 3 and can be very effective, mulched with river stone. The white flowers are beautiful and the plant itself is an exotic looking, structural speci- men that shows well as a feature plant. In the cactus family, Opuntia fragilis,


O. poryapantha and O. Humifusa are both native to many parts of southern Canada. Take a second look at succulents – you


no doubt already have a number of them in your garden: hens and chicks, saxifrage, sedum, bergenia are just a few. You may have a few even more exotic examples in- doors, including burrow tail plants (Sedum morganianum) and kalanchoe that will benefit from a summer outdoors. And an added advantage to these plants is that they are very easy to propagate. Many of them will grow if a leaf or part of a stem is stuck in the soil. Succulents deserve a bigger and better


place in the home and in the garden. Give them a new chance this year. `


Watch The Manitoba Gardener on Shaw TV Channel 9


Is it cacti or cacstuses?


are probably, strictly speaking, all wrong. Or are we? Cactus comes from the Greek word


M


kaktos, meaning a prickle or a thorn or a thistle and the word was applied by Linnaeus to describe the group of plants which he thought were related to the Spanish artichoke, cardoon. According to the International Code


of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants, it as the practice to Latinize spe- cies names (or more precisely to treat as if it were a phrase in the Latin language), even though they may be Greek or some other language. So . . cacti is still correct, but nobody


will throw tomatoes at you if you say cactuses!


Summer 2012 • 19


ost of us say cacti when speaking of more than one cactus, but we


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