On Thursday morning in Palm Springs, we took a tour of Moorten’s Desert Land Botanical Garden.  It was either that or Sunnyland, and after perusing a few photos online of both places, I opted for the messier and crazier botanical garden.  I can appreciate the serenity in a highly orderly formal landscape, but if you know me at all you know that my preference is a more chaotic natural garden.

Arriving at the Moorten Botanical Garden, you just park on the street; it’s not a big place, although it’s been around for some time, according to this plaque which states it was established in 1940.

Cactus Slim sounds like someone I wouldn’t mind hanging out with.  I’m sure Patricia was cool too.

Despite the smallish size of the garden (about one acre apparently), it is absolutely packed with plants.  The most memorable aspect of the garden was the emergence of many excellent vignettes that presented themselves again and again as we wound our way through garden paths. Individual plants were often quite striking, but it was the combinations of textures and forms and colors that fascinated me more than anything.

Looking through my 200 or so photos as I’m putting together this blog post, I’m thinking “how can I organize this?” I’m just going to go through the way I walked through the garden so you can have a sense of what it was like to tour the place.

At the entrance quite a few paths converge, and the cooing of doves is the dominant sound along with occasional voices talking softly.  There is a small sign that says something like “start here and go this way” but of course we went the opposite way for whatever reason, and immediately came across this collection of aloes and euphorbias and other fine things:

I mean how ’bout that.  Right out of the gate.

Euphorbia stenoclada, here as large as a small tree, appears to be considering making some flowers:

I’d never seen Aloe dichotoma before.  This also gets to be a tree! You can see the Euphorbia stenoclada above/behind it.

 

I didn’t see a label on the lovely aloe above.  This has been a great year for me with aloe flowers (which I adore). I got to see tons of them in Australia last June, and now this!

As mentioned this garden is full of fascinating scenes, little (or big) vignettes.  Layers upon layers.  And sticks! Dead branches, logs, and sticks  featured quite prominently in this garden.  I believe I can honestly confess that I have a bit of a thing about dead branches; they make a garden feel “real” to me.

 

I’m on the lookout for some kind of piece of old farm machinery, or really anything suitably rusty, for a friend.  She would have loved these mining relics!

You cannot take a 5-gallon Agave americana on the airplane.  I checked.

More plants for sale.  There were quite a few of them over in the south end of the garden, some with “Sold” tags on them.  Like a botanical art gallery.

While we’re on the subject of plants for sale, you have to see the tables of little succulents they had – such cuteness and oh so colorful! I am really starting to understand the appeal of plants like Echeverias for their waxy glowing pastel shades.

 

Considering how easy these things are to propagate this seems like a great way for the garden to make some money.

 

See the bird coop behind the $5 table? The doves in there were cooing constantly, a lovely sound.

So many suggestive shapes.  Euphemisms and jokes became irresistible with some of these.  I’ll leave it to your imagination.

 

Also for sale was some interesting garden art.  I rather like these peacock things, especially the mostly green one over on the left in back.

More plants:

David models for size comparison:

 

I cannot get over this next scene.  It has everything.

 

Sigh.  There’s more…

 

 

Tallest Opuntia I’ve ever seen on the right in the above pic.  Those agaves are labeled “Blue Agave” which should be A. tequilana and I’m sure you can guess what they are grown for.

From the other side.  These are not small plants – 6 feet tall and wide.

My friend Kate, who loves desert plants, said “I just want to be the guy who rakes this.”  CAN RELATE

Hey guess what! Found the fabled Cactarium! I know just about NONE of these plants so I’ll just let you see with minimal commentary.

 

OMG Welwitschia!

 

 

There’s quite a bit of this sort of snaky ground cactus around in here.

This tall thing pushing through the roof reminds me of the story of the agave that flowered and punctured the roof of the glasshouse it lived in in Kent:

 

 

 

 

Using a finger as a “visor” for the iPhone camera lens is a trick I figured out works pretty well when the light is too bright or the sun is shining into the lens.  Sometimes I miss and photobomb with finger, as above.

 

Caudiciforms: not the sexiest plants IMHO.

Various fun cacti:

 

All right, that’s it for the Cactarium.  Let’s go back outside…

Another beautiful vignette:

 

More impressive Opuntia:

 

Hey I have this plant! Mine looks much the same as this one:

 

Now we’re in this lava rock area.  Nice little plantings here:

Guess what my favorite part of the next picture is?

If you said, “the dead tree” I will hand you 50 cents the next time I see you.

 

Only hardy to about 25F, Caesalpinia cacalaco nonetheless fascinated me with its weird spine-bumps on the trunk and its thick coin-like leaves.

 

 

What is Ironwood you ask? It’s Olneya tesota.  I found one over here…  Like most Eucalyptus and many desert trees, it does not cast a dense shade.

 

Another plant I recognized, Dasylirion wheeleri.  There were several here (and I saw quite a few of them around town).  This isn’t a great picture but you can see how nicely they go with Opuntia for textural contrast:

Speaking of Opuntia, here we go again…

 

I never knew what Jojoba was!

Bursera microphylla.  What a neato tree.  Purple twigs!

More vignettes…

 

 

 

And that brings us back to the entrance of the garden.  Whew! One last plant, this gleaming vermilion Euphorbia milii, which seemed like an appropriately cheery-but-armed greeter for this spiky desert garden.

 

If you made it this far I salute you!  There were so many faptastic plants here that it took three siftings through my photos to finally decide on the 79 selections included this post.  Maybe this is indicative of how much I’ve been craving some color lately!

To recap my favorite things about this botanical garden:

• Many, many beautiful vignettes with broad ranges of texture and form, with multiple layers and varying elevation.  My favorite element.
• The use of dead branches! My second favorite element.  Might be tied for first.
• 5 gallon Agaves for the low low price of $25! Not that it helps me any.
• I didn’t say this yet but I found the hand-painted signs really charming
• Overall the place has a sort of whimsical, weird, out-west-roadside-attraction sort of feel, which was unexpected but I liked it a lot.

Next up: Joshua Tree.  Previously I’ve also posted about plants I encountered in and around town in the gardens and front yards of Palm Springs.