Moorten Botanical Garden

Moorten Botanical Garden is a small, eccentric and much-loved slice of old Palm Springs, tucked into a residential street off South Palm Canyon Drive. Its story begins with Chester Moorten, known as Cactus Slim, a former Keystone Cops actor who arrived in Palm Springs in 1938 and became a cactus collector and landscaper for the Hollywood set. He and his wife Patricia later bought the property that became the garden, and it has been open to visitors for more than eighty years, run by the same family. Inside, a looping sandy path winds through dense plantings of cacti, succulents, desert trees and flowering shrubs from deserts across the Americas and Africa — towering cardon and saguaro, barrel cactus the size of armchairs, spiky agaves and aloes, ocotillos and boojum trees. Rocks, fossils, old mining artifacts and weathered signs are scattered among the plants, and the overall feeling is less formal botanical garden than a lifelong collector's backyard. The highlight is the Cactarium, a greenhouse the garden describes as the world's first, filled with rare and delicate species that need protection from the extremes of the desert. Moorten is open daily from 10am to 4pm except Wednesdays, and in summer it switches to Friday through Sunday from 9am to 1pm. Admission is a small fee, and you can pick up plants at the nursery on the way out. The garden is small enough to see in under an hour, which makes it an easy add-on to a morning at Indian Canyons or an afternoon tram ride. It is also a great introduction to the plants you will see in Joshua Tree and Indian Canyons, with many of them labeled.

The garden's home, a Spanish Colonial-style house known as Cactus Castle, sits at the center of the property and is still the family's residence, adding to the sense that you are visiting someone's private world. That personal touch is the charm: this is not a manicured public garden but an accumulation of decades of collecting, trading and planting, with specimens that have grown to enormous size in the desert sun. Look for the cardons and boojums, the crested and monstrose forms of cacti that grow in strange contorted shapes, and the birds — hummingbirds, quail and finches — that flit through the dense cover.

The garden is at its best in spring, when many cacti burst into improbably bright flowers, but it is pleasant year-round in the morning. Wear closed shoes, keep a respectful distance from the spines, and keep an eye on small children, since the paths are narrow and the plants unforgiving. The walk is easy and mostly flat, though the sandy surface can be awkward for strollers and wheelchairs. Bring water in warm weather; there is limited shade at midday.

Moorten is a perfect antidote to resort Palm Springs, and a reminder that this town was a desert outpost of plant collectors, artists and eccentrics long before it was a playground for stars. Combine it with the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway to see how the desert flora gives way to pine forest in a few thousand feet of altitude, or with a drive through the Deepwell and Las Palmas neighborhoods to see how many midcentury homes incorporate the same cacti and agaves into their landscaping.