Massachusetts' Wild Wild West

Your New England Cactus Garden   Cacuts and the plural is cacti.  -- You can't have a cactus garden outdoors because you live in New England --WRONG!  Having a formidable cactus garden here in New England is not only feasible, it is attainable.  Granted it involves a lot of work -- but so does trimming and maintaining the more winter-hardy plants.

First of all, as you suspect, cacti need to be moved indoors in the winter and gently re-introduced outdoors in the Spring.  So let's begin at the beginning.  If you've never been to Tower Hill Botanical Garden in Boylston, MA then you've missed out on a lot.  And, secondly, you are going to have to create a place where the cacti can winter -- this repository will be about 50 degrees Fahrenheit,  and have some light.  You will not have to do much during the winter season -- not even water them -- not until Spring -- and when the warmer weather breaks, you move your garden outdoors and there you go.  Let's take this step by step.

There is "The Cactus & Succulent Society of Massachusetts"  at Tower Hill Botanical Gardens.  They meet from September to June on the third Saturday of each month.   You can begin now by purchasing cacti.  But cacti, even though it seems like an oxymoron, cannot immediately be brought out into our New England Sun.  Gradual exposure of ever-increasing length is required if the cacti were grown under artificial light in a greenhouse and/or prepared for sale as a house plant.  So, on a day like today, you put your cacti out in the sun for about an hour and then keep them in light-- not direct sun.  An important factor in a display as shown above is that it is open to people just walking up and walking away with your cactus.  I created a dry pools -- digging out areas of the yard and lining them with extremely heavy mil plastic (old pool liners are ideal) and filled the whole thing in with decorative gravel.  When the weather was right, I "planted" my succulent pots in the gravel and it appeared, for the rest of the summer, as though they were growing there by my walk.

Cacti have Life Cycles:  Flowering (just about in it's final stages about this time of year), Growth -- will happen here in New England in the Summer and ,  Dormancy -- will happen in late Fall through Winter.  Here is another link:  The Cactus Museum where you can find a plethora of information on cacti.  

So, all winter I had my cacti in a window, I didn't water them except maybe once or twice (and then sparsely). In Spring, on a day like today, I would bring them all out and place them on the eastern-facing side of the house -- so that they got the full morning sun and nothing more -- more or less shaded the rest of the day.  If the temperature were to fall below 40 degrees at night, I would bring them all in again.  If not, I would leave them out.  Slowly, I acclimatized my cacti until they were strong enough to withstand full sun all day.  When the warm weather finally broke, I would place them in my little gravel pool and there my Cactus Garden stayed all summer to the wonder and amazement of my friends, relatives, neighbors, and passers-by.

I can't cover all aspects of cactus care, and pests, and re-potting and soil composition here  -- but you get the general idea that a beautiful and formidable cactus garden is possible here in New England.