| You're in SA - first and foremost you need to look at what your annual max and min temperatures are, and especially wether or not you are prone to frosts at all. If you are, this will really change the types of cacti and succulents you can plant there, unless you can protect them somehow. Your garden, facing west, would receive more midday to afternoon light, which is harsher than morning light. Some types of succulents prefer semi-shade, or perhaps just morning to midday light, such as some types of Aloe from memory. Still, so long as you acclimatise your new plants to the light gradually they should be okay. Adding some gravel to the soil there would be a good idea. Is it a wet area? Or protected from most of your rain by the walls? The wetter it is, the more gravel and sand you will want for drainage. You could make the top couple of inches or so of the bed mostly pea gravel and sand perhaps, so that at least the bottom of the cacti bodies aren't sitting in wet soil during wetter periods. I wouldn't worry about too much more organic stuff in there, especially where you're going to put the cacti. Your "tall at the back, short at the front" plan sounds good, check out the link for some interesting photos of columnar cacti to give you an idea of what type of thing you like the look of, then once you have some names you can hunt them down. I think Trichocereus species are quite quick growing, and Cleistocactus strausii with silver hair are very striking and bright. Pilosocereus species are often very nice looking in my opinion too. You could underplant these with clumping cacti like Mammillaria or Rebutia species between the taller ones if you wanted to fit more in, or these could go into the lower bed. Or if you're after a blast of colour and contrasting forms you could have all the cacti at the back, and make the lower bed a succulents rockery, with different coloured species of Echeveria, Graptopetalum, Crassula etc. These all love a good dose of sun and will look fab when they're all flowering. They will clump quickly too, and all propagate at the drop of a hat (or leaf, actually!), so if you can't fill it up right away they will do it by themselves, so some gaps left are probably better. You say the beds are separated by a border of rocks, you could plant some Sempervivum between the rocks, these will spread too, and will look nice. They are nice, flat, tight rosettes, very neat, and there are miniature and different coloured species and varieties. The Dutch (or Danish, something like that) call them House Leeks and used to use them as roofing. Good luck, I'm sure some others will come up with more ideas and with more experience than I have to offer! Sounds like fun nonetheless. You may have some losses when you first establish a garen, don't lose heart, these are normal and then you will learn what works best in your conditions. I wish I could do the same, but I'm renting so will just have to garden vicariously through you and your cacti rockery!! All the best, Lis :) |
