Beauty behind the beasty thorns

Collecting plants was never intentional, but I guess it’s the kind of gardener I turned out to be. In fact, the collecting itch is as old as my first stirrings of any interest in gardening. That was in Durban, when my children were babies, in the very first home that we owned.

Cacti and other succulents on the sunny plinth

Our patch was a steep plot in Westville, where I tried to fashion a little garden on the least precarious part. I nurtured the tropical plants that thrive in that hot and humid city, with varying degrees of success and failure.

Seduction

And I discovered bromeliads: I was seduced by their almost obscene flowers, often in vibrant red, that stand up out of their pineapple-like rosettes. So an ever-growing corner of my tiny garden was devoted to bromeliads, all kinds of them. Rainforest plants from the Americas, they love the Durban climate. You’ll still find bromeliads in my garden, in those parts where non-invasive, non-indigenous plants grow.

Over the years, there have been brief flirtations with African violets and fussy ferns (“combed” to death by my children), a slightly more intense affair with dracaenas (thank goodness I planted most in pots and not in the ground, where they get enormous), and enduring relationships with trees (space-permitting), roses and fuschias. Why plant one variety of lettuce when there are a whole lot to try? Why just one type of tomato?

Closer view of the mosaic: note how it sneaks up from the floor

But nothing set in as strongly as my fascination with cacti and other succulents. I didn’t even know it was happening. One day, I looked around and thought: “Ooh, there are so many succulents in little pots all over the place. What would happen if I put them all together?” An instant and abiding collection is what happened.

Cunning mosaic

Flowers of the devil's tongue barrel cactus

I learned the first rule about collections: things look better in groups. I saved the plinth of an old broken water tank from the builders in the nick of time – “Stop!” I shrieked after telling them to smash it down – and set about covering it in a mosaic (of flowers, of course). The mosaic, if you look carefully, cunningly extends from the floor mosaic that covers the ugly mix of old and new concrete.

The plinth is crammed with all kinds of cacti, most of which come from Central America. One of my favourites is a devil’s tongue barrel (Ferocactus latispinus). It was given to me – it measured about 10cm across then – as part of an invitation to an event when I worked on a newspaper in Johannesburg. We had to hand in gifts to avoid being bribed; they would be auctioned to the staff at the end of each year and the proceeds given to charity. I couldn’t banish this little thing to a cupboard and certain death, so I “declared” the gift and took it home.

One of the crassulas

Monstrous

It’s grown into a monstrous thing, about 60cm wide with vicious hook-like claws: I bear a scar as proof. But when it flowers, you’d swear the fairies had dropped some delicacy – fragile yellow flowers hide behind the thorns. That, to me, is the magic of cacti: the beasty thorns contrast with flowers of surprising and exceptional beauty.

Faucaria in flower

I love the South African succulents in my collection, like the gasteria (so named because the flowers look like little stomachs), hawthornia, little aloes and faucaria. Some of these prefer shade, so the collection extends onto an old scaffolding plank in the shade.

Pretty vicious

The euphorbia could probably make a collection in their own right: those in my care range from the giant African candelabra (kept small in pots) to the wiggly Euphorbia caput-medusa (I just love that name; the plant does look like Medusa’s head).

Periodically, I cut up old ice-cream containers to make labels and try to identify the plants in the collection. Just when I think I have found the correct name, something else that seems more correct presents itself, as if the name is forever wriggling out of reach. Doesn’t matter; I like the search.