A New Chapter for Phoenix Rising Succulents: Northern California, 2 Acres, a New Greenhouse, and What’s Ahead

It has been a long time since we’ve written a blog post, and to say a lot has happened since the last one would be an understatement.

For those of you who have followed Phoenix Rising Succulents for a while, you know that we are always growing something, propagating something, or coming up with another project that probably creates even more work for ourselves.

This past year, though, has been on an entirely different level.

In January 2026, we packed up Phoenix Rising Succulents and moved from Southern California to Durham, California, just outside of Chico in Northern California.

And this wasn’t simply a change of address.

It was a chance for us to build the nursery we’ve wanted for a very long time.

Our New Home in Durham

Our new property sits on 2 acres and gives us considerably more room to grow than we’ve ever had before, including a large commercial greenhouse that has completely changed what is possible for us.

Moving an established nursery—and all of the plants that come with it—is something we probably underestimated until we were actually doing it.

There were a lot of plants to move.

A LOT.

and unfortunately not all made it. 

Since arriving in Durham, much of our time has been spent getting everything settled, organizing growing areas, making improvements to the greenhouse and property, and putting the infrastructure in place for where we want Phoenix Rising Succulents to go next.

There is still plenty to do. There probably always will be.

But every month, this place looks a little more like the nursery we have pictured in our heads for years.

And it feels good to finally see it coming together.

Half a Million Seeds. Yes, Really.

One of the things we are probably most excited about is what the new facility allows us to do with seed production.

Growing from seed has always been an important part of Phoenix Rising Succulents, but we now have the space to take it to an entirely different level.

Our goal?

A HALF MILLION seeds planted by spring!

Yes. Approximately 500,000 seeds.

We have been fertilizing, pollinating, hybridizing, collecting seed, and planning sowings like crazy.

There are going to be a lot of seed trays around here.

For those of you who love unusual plants as much as we do, this is where things get really exciting.

Growing at this scale gives us the opportunity to work with more unusual species, documented locality material, interesting forms, selected parent plants, and plenty of our own hybrids and crosses.

It also lets us play the long game.

Many of the seeds we plant today won’t produce a saleable plant anytime soon. Some of them will take years.

And we’re completely okay with that.

We want Phoenix Rising Succulents to be a nursery that is actively producing the plants collectors will be looking for in the future—not simply searching for plants that are already circulating today.

Some of the most exciting things growing here right now are tiny seedlings that won’t be exciting to anyone else for quite a while.

We know what they’re going to become, though.

Yes, You’ll Be Able to Visit Us

One of the questions we’ve already been getting is whether the new location will eventually be open to the public.

Yes!

We are currently working through the final improvements around the nursery and greenhouse, and our goal is to be open to the public by the end of September 2026.

We’ll share more information as we get closer, including our hours, visiting details, and what to expect when you come out.

This is something we are genuinely excited about.

Buying plants online is great—and obviously a huge part of what we do—but there is nothing quite like walking through a greenhouse and seeing everything in person.

You notice plants you would have scrolled right past online. You see the differences between individual specimens. You find that weird plant sitting in the corner that suddenly becomes the one you absolutely have to take home.

We’re looking forward to finally being able to share that experience with all of you here in Durham.

If You’ve Visited Our Website Lately…

While we’ve been building things at the nursery, we’ve also been doing a lot of building online.

We have been putting a tremendous amount of work into prsucculents.com.

Those of you who have followed us for a while probably know that our actual collection has always been much larger than what you could see on the website.

We are finally working hard to change that.

New plants are being added to the website every day right now.

That means photographing plants, researching them, writing descriptions, updating information, and slowly working our way through an enormous amount of inventory.

If you checked the website a few weeks ago, check again.

There is probably something there now that wasn’t there before.

And if you check again next week, there will probably be more.

Our goal isn’t simply to get more plants online, either.

We want prsucculents.com to become a genuinely useful resource for people who are interested in the plants we grow.

That means listings that go beyond a photograph and a botanical name.

We want to talk about where these plants actually come from, their native habitats, how they grow, how they flower, how they reproduce, how they can be propagated, and all of those little details that make one species, locality, form, or hybrid different from another.

There are some fascinating stories behind these plants.

We want the website to tell more of them.

So…What Comes Next?

A lot.

The move has given us something we desperately needed: room to grow.

And we intend to use it.

More seeds.

More seedlings.

More hybrids.

More species.

More locality plants.

More plants available on the website.

More experiments.

More greenhouse projects.

And probably a few ideas we haven’t even come up with yet.

We’re also going to make an effort to bring this blog back to life.

There is so much we want to talk about—individual species, native habitats, propagation, growing plants from seed, unusual plant groups, hybridizing, greenhouse observations, collector terminology, and some of the things happening behind the scenes here that never make it onto the website or social media.

Most importantly, though, we want to say thank you.

Whether you’ve bought one plant from us or dozens, followed us online, told a friend about us, shared one of our posts, stopped by at a show, or simply enjoyed looking at the weird plants we’re obsessed with—you have helped Phoenix Rising Succulents get here.

We appreciate it more than you probably realize.

This move feels like the beginning of a completely new chapter for us, and we’re incredibly excited to see what this place looks like a year from now…five years from now…and beyond.

For now, we have a nursery to finish.

And apparently half a million seeds to plant.

We should probably get back to work.

Matt and Amanda

Phoenix Rising Succulents
Durham, California