Plant choice for outdoor garden that gets some frost...?

[Boily]

Hi, thanks for any help!

I just created an out door bed 3.5m x 10m, which is a raised bed over roadbase. Soil depth is approx 20cm deep. Its about half full already with a line of mature ponytail palm across the back next to the fences. Think there is 12 ponytails. I also have a 45 year old cereus peruvianus stump established.

Question is what to plant in the rest. Each winter we get multiple frost around -1C to -3C, and every five of so years we get an odd -5C. Temperature gets quite low, so it would be easy to lose plants. We also get periods of heavy rains, mainly storms. The garden does dry out fairly quickly though.... In summer we get intense heat up to 45 degrees celcius.

I have pots of trichocerues peruvianus, pachanoi and spachianus, bridgesii montrose and cereus peruvianus monstrose, cleistocactus straussii(which will go in, they all survived -5C)
Also have echinopsis oxygona, and similar hybrids. A few opuntia.

I recently picked up a neobuxbaumia polylopha tip cutting? Will this survive in anyone's experience.

Also a polaskia chichipe cutting? Any idea's?

I'm also thinking of planting out my echinocactus grusonii? I have 5 in my hot house....

What about ferocactus glaucescens? I have large pot bound plant... What about other fero's?, I have about 12 different varieties....

Also thinking about my large Mam bombycina clump, compressa clump, mam mystax(large)? Any other good mamm's that can take the frost? I have 100+ different...

How about notocactus? I have a few extra magnificus..... Also tephrocactus? I did have one out that survived -5C, guessing they are all hardy?

Just throwing out idea's, thanks for any advice. looking forward to planting it out. Will post some pic's later on. Any other ideas?

Thanks
Ben in Australia

[Harriet]

My limited experience with in-ground cacti in a similar area (hot humid rainy summers and dry mild winters that host several trips into hard freezes) is that as long as the bed drains well, cactus are about as tough as they look. I have a couple of golden barrels, many opuntias, echinopsis (huascha and calochlora), and a ferro and a couple or two taking up permanent residence in my yard. Also included in the mix are a couple of euphorbia, a stapeliad, several succulents, and a whole bunch of Agave. I cover the most tender plants when we have a hard freeze, but that's about it, the rest of the time all I do is talk to them nicely when they need weeding!

I did a lot of searches on line to find out the temperature range of each of the plants before I planted them. So far the searches have paid off well.

[promethean_spark]

Tephrocactus articulatus survives frost and rain for me. It hasn't seen -5'C yet, though I understand it should be able to take it, at least if dry.

[vlani]

Cleistocactus schtrausii is a good plant for cold wet winters. Group of 10-20 plants when 2m tall look magnificent.
Most of other cleistocacti will do fine.
Oreocerei trolli and celsianus should be good
Echinocereus engelmannii, mojavensis, triglochidadus, coccinneus all forms will do fine. Also all of viridiflorus on smaller side.
Many opuntoides - maihueniopsis boolivianus and glomeratus, darwinii, tephro articulatus, strombiliformis, paediophylus. Lots of NA opuntias and cylindripuntias. Lots to select from - larger/smaller plants. Not sure if you can get them down there
Maihuenuas will do fine. This would be actually the preferred culture for them
Same goes with Austrocylindropuntia floccosa.
Some fero and echinocacti do fine, especially once large enough. Not fordii and chrysocantus, may be none from penincula. Definitely cylindraceus and relatives are OK E. grusony is OK but it starts offsetting when exposed to frost
Some trychocerei are good. Cardon for instance.

All of the above and some others are fine around here with occasional -10C nights and winter rains. The neighbor has also A. myriostigma, chamaecereus hybrid, noto ubelmannii, mamm. pettersonii, pringlei, and some others I do not remember. I have noto mammulosus out there. Brasilicactus (noto haselbergii) will die, as you would expect given the name.
Pedio simpsonii is another good one on smaller side. Escobaria missuriensis and arizonica, arizonica actually grows large clumps eventually, at least some forms

Some of the plants I mentioning are actually require cold and wet winters to bloom.

[Shmuel]

Boily, sounds really nice and I am looking forward to seeing pics.

I would add Echinopsis to your list - they seem pretty tough by me. Sorry I don't exactly know which species. I definitely second Cleistocactus strausii - it seems to grow pretty fast in the ground, too.

vlani - your list is terrific and a great help to me. Our climate is a lot like California with winter rain, but we get frost more like Sydney - a few here and there and an occaisional hard frost every few years...
My soil (in the cactus garden) is a high raised mound of gravelly clay soil. We have had a lot of light rains so far with no frost yet. Basically keeps things cold-muddy, but nothing rotted yet.

Enjoy and keep us posted,

Shmuel