Rewilding My Lot

There is an area towards the back of the garden where I have clustered several succulent plants together and surrounded them with stones. The stones serve several purposes, including being shelter or habitat for small creatures, and being a place to collect the MANY stones that I have dug out of this ground (they were not naturally here, but used as land fill by the house builder).

In this stone pile there were three groups of Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora), two groups of Yellow Yucca (a yellow variant of the red), a Blue Twistleaf Yucca (Yucca rupicola x pallida), and a Variegated American Century Plant (Agave americana).

There is now a new arrival in this area, a pad “offspring” from a larger Prickly Pear plant in San Antonio. I think that this might be a Spineless Prickly Pear (Opuntia ellisiana), which has been derived by cultivation. Assuming this plant grows, I hope to study it further and verify its ID. Here’s a photo of the mother plant.

To make room for the new cactus, I cleared away some of the Firewheel aka Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella) that were growing near the succulent area.

Then I planted the Prickly Pear, which was in the form of an original pad (“nopal”) that has rooted with two new shoots growing from it.

After planting the new addition, I enlarged the rock pile so that all the succulents would be visibly clustered together. As these plants grow, the stones can be adjusted to accommodate them.