A Brooklyn Girl’s Guide to Sunday: The Best Cactus Garden in Palm Springs
Moorten Botanical Garden is heaven on earth. We have a longer story forthcoming about this oasis in Palm Springs, but I’m writing about it again because it’s the most weekend-worthy place I’ve ever been. I’m a dedicated and faithful cactus lover. I turned up at college with all my stuff and some cacti and tomato plants in pots. The tomatoes died and so did my desire to raise them on a windowsill, but the cacti lived and my enthusiasm for them has only grown. It’s actually significantly disproportionate to how I feel about other plants. Cacti are my number one, which makes Moorten the ultimate destination. It’s a family-run garden off of Palm Canyon Drive that winds and twists its way around, home to every kind of cactus you could possibly dream of.
On site, there were many cacti I had never seen before and couldn’t believe existed– cacti with enormous, snake-like bodies and ones with teeny tiny flowers sprouting from their crowns. We went in the late afternoon, which meant that the light lingered on every spine and spike and the entire garden glowed. Hidden in the back is the greenhouse, which I realized immediately is the one place I could live besides where I do now (in Brooklyn). It was like walking into a magic capsule, with something new covering every inch. Leaving seemed impossible. Luckily, I took maybe ten videos of the place that I now watch far too often, rehashing my memories of its magic beneath the golden desert light.
