wall frame aquarium

Cacti: They aren't just for deserts anymore

At Tacoma’s Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium a full blown – and often blooming – cactus garden is thriving alongside the meerkats and lemurs.

It seems like an oxymoron of gardening: a cactus garden in the soggy Pacific Northwest. Don’t these leafless plants need long days of scorching sun and drought-like growing conditions?

As zoo horticulturist Bryon Jones has discovered, the answer to both questions is no.

The garden just inside the main entrance to the zoo is now in its fourth summer. The long crescent-shaped space contains not only cacti but other arid zone plants. The backdrop for this unusual collection is a faux desert wall.

“Year-round this will stop people,” Jones says of the garden. “(There are) lots of questions about how to grow these.”

SPECIES

As antithetical as cacti may seem in the Northwest the desert areas of the Okanagan Valley are rife with the spiny plants and there’s even a species native to western Washington, Opuntia fragilis, found in the San Juan Islands. But Jones has gathered plants from far beyond the Northwest.

The plants in the zoo’s garden range from the Sonoran desert to Morocco to South Africa in origin. All of the cacti are from the Americas.

When it comes time to flower, one of the most striking species in the garden is Opuntia polyacantha, the prickly-pear cactus. The species occurs naturally from British Columbia to Mexico with numerous varieties flowering in eye-popping colors.

Another cactus, the cholla, is native to the Sonoran Desert. It raises its spindly frame along the garden’s wall. It bloomed in late July with magenta flowers.

While some plants in the garden are not cacti, they certainly fit the theme. Yuccas burst with their sword-like leaves radiating from a central stalk. Jones has planted several varieties ranging from purple leafed to one with white margins on its leaves (Yucca aloifolia Variegata).

The Wall

The wall, a thriller

The wall

The wall, growing up behind the Iron Curtain

Aquarium Atlas