Seed grown · Named species · Mail order
A plant labelled "cactus mix" is a plant nobody can advise you about, because half the species sold that way want completely opposite treatment: some rot at the first drop of winter water, others need it, and a few will not survive a night below five degrees while their neighbour on the shelf shrugs off frost. Everything here is grown from seed or cuttings of known origin, labelled with its accepted name, and grown hard and slow so it looks like the plant it will actually become.
About us
The nursery grew out of a private collection that reached about eight hundred plants and had comprehensively defeated the roof terrace it lived on. Its owner, a biologist by training, had spent years correcting the names on plants bought from garden centres and had come to the conclusion that the trade's casual attitude to identification was the single biggest obstacle to anyone learning to grow these plants properly. Selling correctly named plants was the obvious response.
We propagate almost everything ourselves, from seed of documented wild or collection origin and from cuttings of our own mother plants, and we keep the records that make the label meaningful. Where a name is genuinely uncertain we label it as such rather than guessing, and where a plant is a hybrid or a cultivar we say so. Collectors care about this deeply; beginners benefit from it without realising, because a correct name is the key to every piece of care advice that follows.
Plants are grown hard: bright light, generous ventilation, mineral compost, a genuinely dry winter and no forced feeding. They grow more slowly than nursery stock raised warm and wet, and they arrive dense, well-spined, properly coloured and able to survive the transition to your windowsill. A soft plant looks wonderful for a month and then etiolates, drops its colour and rots at the base, and the customer concludes they have no talent for growing.
Advantages
Six reasons a plant from here behaves differently in your care.
Names are not decoration: they tell you the altitude and climate a plant came from, and therefore whether it wants winter water, how cold it can go, how much sun it will take and when it should be dormant. We label with accepted current names, note the origin of the seed or cutting, and flag uncertainty honestly rather than inventing a plausible species. It is the difference between care instructions and guesswork.
Plants raised warm, wet and fed grow fast, look plump and collapse when they meet real conditions. Ours are grown in bright light with strong ventilation, kept genuinely dry all winter and fed sparingly, so they are compact, heavily spined and properly coloured. They take a year or two longer to reach saleable size, which is a cost we absorb and the reason a plant from here does not stretch and pale within a month of arriving with you.
Almost every commercially sold cactus arrives in a dense peat mix that holds water for a fortnight and is the direct cause of most beginners' losses. Everything here grows in a free-draining mineral blend of pumice, lava grit and a small organic fraction, so roots get oxygen and a mistake with the watering can is survivable. We sell the same mix by the sack, and repotting into it is the single most effective thing most people can do for their collection.
Wild collection has stripped habitats of several genera and continues in the rare plant trade despite being illegal for protected species. Everything we sell is nursery propagated here or bought from growers who can document their material, with the paperwork available for anything regulated. Nobody needs a wild-collected plant, and a seed-raised specimen is better adapted to cultivation anyway because it has never known anything else.
Before selling anything we ask which way your window faces, whether the plant will go outside in summer, how cold the room gets in winter and whether you travel. Some species simply will not thrive in a north-facing flat and we will say so and suggest what will. Sending somebody home with a plant destined to fail costs us a customer eventually, and honest matching is why people come back with photographs of plants that have doubled in size.
Mail order kills a great many plants, almost always because they were sent wet, loose or in the wrong season. We ship bare-rooted and dry, individually wrapped so spines cannot damage neighbours, with roots protected and the box built to take a fall, and we hold orders back rather than send during a cold snap or a heatwave. Every parcel includes instructions for the first three weeks, which is the period that decides whether the plant establishes.
Services
Plants for beginners and collectors, rare species, growing supplies, mail order, planting and maintenance, identification and courses.
A wide range of cacti and other succulents from robust species that forgive almost anything to plants that demand real attention, all correctly named and all grown here. Beginners are steered towards the forgiving end with an explanation of why, and there is always a bench of good-sized, inexpensive plants for people furnishing a flat rather than starting a collection. Larger specimens of many species are available for those who want immediate presence.
Seed-raised plants of species that rarely appear in the trade, including slow-growing globulars, caudiciforms, crested and variegated forms and material from documented field collections. Availability is limited and irregular by nature, and we keep a wants list rather than pretend otherwise. Every regulated species is supplied with its documentation, and we are happy to discuss provenance in as much detail as any collector wishes.
Our own mineral growing mix by the bag or the pallet, plus pumice, lava grit, quartz sand and top dressing gravels sold separately for those who blend their own, clay and plastic pots in the sizes these plants actually need, labels, low-nitrogen feed and the few treatments worth owning. We explain what each component does, because a grower who understands their mix stops needing to buy anybody's opinion in a sack.
Plants packed bare-rooted and dry, shipped nationally and across the region, with orders held during extreme weather rather than dispatched into it. The list is updated as stock changes and each entry states size, whether the plant is seed or cutting raised, and its real requirements. Anything that arrives damaged is replaced without argument, though careful packing means this happens very rarely.
Design and planting of dry gardens, gravel beds, roof terraces and courtyards using species suited to the exposure and the winter rainfall, with drainage built properly since that is what kills these plantings rather than cold. We also maintain collections for owners who travel, repot on a schedule, treat infestations, and rescue neglected collections that have been inherited or left in a greenhouse for several unattended years.
Free identification of plants brought in or photographed, along with an honest opinion of their condition and what to do next — usually repotting and rather less water. We run short practical courses through the year on propagation from seed and cuttings, grafting, repotting and overwintering, limited to ten people, held in the growing houses with everyone's hands in the compost rather than in front of a screen.
Contacts
Photographs of a sick plant, of the pot it is in and of the window it sits by will usually get you a diagnosis the same day, at no charge. For orders, tell us the conditions you can offer and we will suggest species rather than simply filling a basket.
The nursery is open to visitors and the growing houses can be walked through; wear something you do not mind snagging.
Nursery7 Carretera de Rincón, 29730 Rincón de la Victoria, Málaga, Spain
Phone+34 952 40 71 26
Emailviveroespinaverde@icloud.com
OpenWednesday–Sunday 09:00–14:00 and 16:30–19:30