A Fascinating Hobby That Turned Into A Business

Buck and Yvonne were both raised in greener pastures, namely the Pacific Northwest where tall fir trees, azaleas and rhododendrons are the norm. If we thought about cacti and succulents at all, we pictured that tall spiny cactus with the arms that sprouted in the Arizona desert. Boy, were we in for a surprise!

In 1990 we moved to the Inland Empire area of Southern California, and since we both love gardening, our landscape soon displayed every new plant we were introduced to. Both of us have since become University of California Master Gardeners for Riverside County.

We quickly became aware of the immense variety of succulents that make outstanding landscape plants, both those native to Southern California and from around the world, and we were hooked. Each year the lawn shrunk and the succulent garden expanded. We now have over 400 varieties of succulents in the ground. Our garden was on the Riverside Flower Show Garden Tour in 1999 and received a Residential Beautification Award from our local Chamber of Commerce in 2000.

We joined the Gates Cactus and Succulent Society and Buck is currently president of the Society. We are members of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America. Our enthusiasm knows no bounds.

What to do next? How could we share our interest in succulents with others? The answer was obvious. We could propagate our specimen plants and offer them for sale to others. That is how the Prickly Palace was born.

Prickly Palace is a wholesale grower of succulents. Our customers are retail nurseries in the Riverside California area. You should open the Links section of our site to discover those nurseries that currently sell Prickly Palace plants.

You will find that our advice about the culture of our plants generally relates to our local climate. We are in Sunset Zone 18, which has normal lowest temperatures of near freezing and highest temperatures above 100 deg F.