Cactus garden in Lebanon

[ElieEstephane]

Turns out one of the most interesting nurseries in Lebanon is only 20 km away from my house. I've dealt with them before on fruit trees, ornamentals and a millenial olive tree but never knew they sold cacti. Besides the small cacti every nursery, flowershop, supermarket etc sell, they have some very large specimen. However, the prices on most of the bigger cacti are above what i would pay for a hobby.
Here are some of the stuff they sell. My phone was dying so I will take more photos next time i visit:

Agave victoria reginae

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New collection

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The horrible painted cacti

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Some old specimen from their collection (from their page). They were terribly labelled and we spent a good deal time correcting them. They had the ferocactus robustus labelled as echinocereus trighlochidiatus and the pachycereus pringlei as trichocereus pascana and many other crazy names

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A cactus garden they did (from their page):

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[keith]

Nice! I like the Golden barrels and the stone path and I think thoses are olive trees against a brick building. Very Mediterranean climate looking reminds me of Northern San Diego. Lots of cactus nurseries in N San Diego because the weather is just about perfect for growing.

[ElieEstephane]

Nice! I like the Golden barrels and the stone path and I think thoses are olive trees against a brick building. Very Mediterranean climate looking reminds me of Northern San Diego. Lots of cactus nurseries in N San Diego because the weather is just about perfect for growing.

Yes these are olives! We are famous in Lebanon for our olive trees and we have lots of millenial trees eveywhere. Everything thrives in our Mediterannean climate but the cacti struggle a little in our rainy winters.

[Pompom]

The nursery looks so nice! Here where I live I have to buy my cacti from normal markets since here is no nurseries for cacti. Couple of flower shops with couple of cacti and that's all. Normally they sell grafted cacti and baby cacti and there is always golden barrel somewhere. They don't even sell bags of seed mixtures here. Well it's kinda understandable since the environment here is not the best for growing cacti.

But I've noticed cacti are becoming more and more popular and they are seen more in decoration/design magazines. Hopefully that kind of stuff increases the cacti sold.

[ElieEstephane]

I guess at some point in the 50s or 60s xeric plants were very popular in Lebanon as you can see lots of huge abandonned opuntia, cereus, hylocereus, euphorbia and many more. But recently there are very few growers even though our weather is perfect. I wonder why?
And yes 99% of cactus imports are destined for decoration as advrrtised in the magazines. But that's not strictly a bad thing since it gets people interested in cacti. They buy their first cactus and it dies so they start to look on the internet to see what went wrong. The more they look and learn, the more cacti they want. And when the cactus bug has bitten, there's no coming back!

[hegar]

Here at the U.S.-Mexico border cacti can be found in some yards, but most people prefer agaves or yuccas, perhaps because they do grow to a large size quicker, perhaps, because the home owner does not want to face any liability lawsuits when a child gets poked and injured by a cactus.
While we do see small cacti that have glued-on, colored strawflower blossoms, some places in Mexico just push the wiry stems of these flowers into the succulent cactus body. Mostly tourists fall for this trick, thinking, that the small cactus has truly beautiful flowers.
Also, tastes change over time. When I grew up in Germany, many homes had cacti displayed on the windowsills. Now, moth orchids (Phalaenopsis spp.)seem to be en vogue.
For outdoor planting, which we can do for a good number of cactus genera and species, the composition of the community also plays a big role.
Here in El Paso, most inhabitants consider cacti to be weeds, with the exception perhaps of the Golden Barrel cactus and the Saguaro cactus.
Prickly pear cacti are sometimes planted, if the homeowner wants to eat the fruit and/or the cladode (pad). Our population here consists of mainly people that have moved here from Mexico, a lot of them fairly recently. So a cactus is nothing special to them and not worth spending money on.
Other cities with a more cosmopolitan inhabitant composition, especially if it includes European people and "Northerners", have more people showing an interest in cacti. To them these plants are exotic and intriguing. They also usually do have more money and will spend it on native plants.

Harald

[ElieEstephane]

Cacti are considered here weeds too and are only coming back as decor item unfortunately. And sadly most old cacti are getting chopped up to make room for vegetable greenhouses, parking lots, car sale lots... it's a shame really but if you are not a cactus person all you see is a weed standing between you and making money. Even those who cultivate prickly pear and dragon fruits are moving towoards vegetable as you can sell all year, easier and faster whereas cacti fruit are in sale only a couple of weeks.
On the other hand, our case is the same as yours, where yuccas and agaves are very widespread. Almost literally every house has a yucca. Palms and cycads are very popular too. Some municipalities are moving on draught tolerate plants for landscaping but that's going very slowly.
As to orchids, i never really liked them. I don't know why

[DesertSun]

That's so sad Elie, for people to get rid of such wonderful plants....

[Fadik2]

Hi Elie, can you please tell me the name of the nursery that sells all these cacti?

[ElieEstephane]

Hi Elie, can you please tell me the name of the nursery that sells all these cacti?

Vert veine. Batroun highway towards chekka tunnel