I like books on single families of plants. There are way too many succulents to cover well in one book. I just bought Greg Starrs book on Agaves and I love it.

I suggest looking at the photographs in the forum and then googling their names and their relatives in the family. Take those names and look in past articals using the search mechanism on the forum,. That will give you an idea of what you are drawn to. Aloes, , Haworthias, Agaves, mesembs, caudex forming woody types. SO MANY TYPES.

Do you want to grow them outside or if you CAN grow them outside. I have only gotten books on agaves, because that is my focus for growing outdoors. Everything else I get off of sites online. There is a lot of info circulating online.

There is a forum that has Garden and Dave's in the reverse order in their name ( we aren't allowed to say the name here). There are great articles on aloes on it. ALL sorts of allows written by a member of our forum here.

I'm not sure there is one book that will have all the info you're after. But one that comes close is Succulent Container Gardens by Debra Lee Baldwin. It is not specifically cacti, but there are some included. Will you be using succulents other than cactus?

She has a new book out (which I haven't seen yet-but will likely buy in the near future) called Simply Succulents.

I, like Mara, enjoy books on individual genus. My library is bursting! I found no single book did it for me. =)

Welcome to the hobby! Hope you post some pix here of your plants. We can probably identify then for you.

This post was edited by rosemariero on Sun, Jun 23, 13 at 9:24