Visit to Lester's Place - Orana Cactus World
By Vicki Mercer

© 1997 Copyright remains with Author

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Lester has lived in Gilgandra all his life and began to take an interest in cacti as a milk-boy. Some ladies to whom he delivered gave him cuttings of their plants. Apparently, succulents were a lot easier to grow out here since they didn’t require a great deal of water.

He has built up a collection of the past 47 years growing most — if not all — of his plants from seed. He continues to grow from seed and sells to other cacti enthusiasts by mail order all over Australia.

Around 20 years ago, Lester bought a block of land in the main street of Gilgandra with the purpose of housing his collection and having it open to the public for viewing and selling cactus. He built rock wall garden-beds both outside and inside his 90’ x 50’ glasshouse. Both are filled with mature cactus and succulents. The age and size of these plants is remarkable, and the collection includes a good-looking, 3-foot tall, 45-year-old…Astrophytum, and a humungous Gymnocalycium saglionis. At over 400mm wide, it was larger than I ever expected a Gymno to grow. Upon benches at the back of the glasshouse is Lester’s collection of many old plants. He keeps them (in my opinion) underpotted — to save bench-space. He does, however, do a 3-year cycle of repotting during which all of the old soil is totally removed and the plant is repotted into fresh sand and manure. At the onset of winter, he unpots the plants, shakes off the soil, and sits it back in the pot bare-rooted, and repots at his own pace during winter weekends. Noticing my surprised look, Lester explains that he does not water at all during winter as the temperatures get as low as -10C and the plants don’t mind staying unpotted at all.

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    Surprisingly, Lester still collects for himself: much more selectively, however, due to space restrictions. And it makes me wonder, is any hot-house ever big enough? Even the indoor garden beds have Espostoas tapping at the fibreglass roof.

    Now, to the Sales Area! Well, it’s rather like a ‘Pick’n Pay’ Hypermarket as I go into ‘hyperdrive’ pointing out the plants I wanted, while Craig stood there patiently counting the pennies. All the plants are grown in seedling trays and Lester skilfully lifts out the ones you choose, without causing damage to the plant or himself. Then he wraps them in newspaper and boxes them for a safe ride home. You can buy potted plants from $4 while the bare-rooted plants start from $2. Believe me, the small price you pay for the size of these plants makes this trip most worthwhile.

    If you intend purchasing the $1 plants from his mail order list, I suggest you post forward by a week the list of your wants and Lester will have them ready for you when you arrive. The reason is that these plants are kept solely for mail order customers. A new list comes out in January. You will automatically be on his mailing list if you place an order with him each year.

    I would like to congratulate Lester on having such a wonderful collection open to the public, and to thank him for his hospitality and for answering my barrage of questions.