From the editors. Cactus collectors used to put their pots tightly close to each other, mostly because of lack of space. But there are such things as alpine gardens, rock gardens, a miniature gardens and so on also exist in the world. People would like to see not just straight rows of plant pots, but 3D compositions that look like natural landscapes - miniature gardens.

Miniature gardens are not the most wide-spread way to keep plants indoors. Although potted together plants keep the soil moist longer and look highly decorative.

The compositions based on oppositions of colours are especially impressive as well as those with theme concepts, for example, imitation of different natural landscapes. Nevertheless, it is also important to know that the impressive compositions can be made not by using as many cacti genera as possible, but by right selection and matching.

While selecting the materials upon this topic we decided to divide them into three groups:

1. Dish gardens.
2. Miniature gardens.
3. Miniature gardens for open ground.

Each of the kind has its own peculiarities, conditions and rules, that can be figured out by experience. The authors will tell you about it by themselves.

Unfortunately, we have no possibilities to translate everything in English (about our financial difficulties), and the most part of all the materials is in Russian. However, we encourage our English-speaking readers to take a look on the photos and to participate in discussion of this topic. It will be useful for all of us! Thank you. For automatic translation articles use our pages: first and second.

Links to the articles (most articles are in Russian):

The article contains a text and a photo - a long shot of the alpine garden. A full version of the article with detailed photos is on the pages of the magazine, issue 6 (16) - December, 2002 (by KrolikUdaff)