2023 – Cold-Hardy Gardening

Photos by Marty Altepeter and Jolie Krupnik
Text by Jolie Krupnik

I recently had the good fortune to visit Marty and Audrey Altepeter’s cold-hardy gardens. Opuntias are Marty’s passion, and he is quite good at collecting, growing and propagating them. Set in a rustic, woodsy area, the gardens boast a variety of opuntias with spectacular blooms, multiple yucca species, echinocereus and other cold-hardy plants. You will see below that not all yellow-flowering opuntias are the same!