Cactus and Succulent Glasshouses, Fairy Lake Botanical Garden (仙湖植物园仙人掌与多肉园)

Fairy Lake Botanical Garden was born soon after the creation of the Shenzhen special economic zone. In April 1982 Mayor Liang Xiang proposed a botanical garden, first planned on Mount Lianhua; in January 1983 an expert team led by Professor Sun Xiaoxiang recommended the Dakengtang site instead, between Shenzhen Reservoir and Mount Wutong, and gave the garden its name. Professor Meng Zhaozhen led the overall design with his colleagues Bai Rixin, Huang Jinqi and Yang Laili. Construction began on 1 December 1984 and the garden opened on 1 May 1988.

The Desert Plant Garden was one of the first additions. Sources differ on when it started: the garden's English page and a descriptive text reproduced by the Bendibao website date the start of work to 1992, the latter mentioning three large exhibition greenhouses and three production greenhouses, while the garden's Chinese page speaks of preparations launched in 1993. The official chronology records completion on 14 October 1995, and the area opened to the public that same month.

Since January 2008 the garden has been run jointly by the city of Shenzhen and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The area was renovated from 2016, with the works completed in January 2017; it then took its present name, the Cacti and Succulent Garden, in 2016 according to the area's pages and in 2017 according to the chronology.

Covering more than 10,000 m², the area is organised around three exhibition greenhouses, each devoted to one part of the world: the Americas, Asia and Africa. Covered 'wind and rain' walkways link them, so that visitors move from one house to the next sheltered from showers. A guide published by the Hong Kong rail operator MTR describes the Americas house as a transparent hemispherical greenhouse and the most photogenic spot in the whole botanical garden. According to the text reproduced by Bendibao, three production greenhouses complete the complex for growing on the introduced plants.

The division of the collections sets the role of each building, from the cactus house to the house for large African desert plants. At the entrance, a small wooden cabin serves as the volunteers' house, and the slope to its right carries an open-air 'forest' of columnar cacti.

The sources consulted give neither the designers' names nor the dimensions of the greenhouses, nor any detail of their materials or of the 2016-2017 works.

The plants on show come mainly from the Americas and Africa. The garden speaks of several hundred species of cacti and succulents spread over the three greenhouses: the cactus family in the Americas house, succulents in the Asia house, and spurges with taller desert plants in the Africa house. Its English page illustrates the area with Aloe globuligemma, Aloe chabaudii, Mammillaria schumannii, Gymnocalycium baldianum, Thelocactus bicolor and Astrophytum ornatum.

The text reproduced by Bendibao, still using the name Desert Plant Garden, lists more than 1,000 species or cultivars introduced: over 600 cacti in more than 40 genera, over 100 aloes and some 300 other succulents from nearly 20 families. It mentions golden barrel cacti (金琥) more than 80 cm across, a giant columnar cactus (巨人柱) 6 m tall and around 200 years old, and living stones (生石花), succulents that mimic pebbles. These figures may have changed since the renovation.

The Cacti and Succulent Garden lies within Fairy Lake Botanical Garden, in Liantang, Luohu District. The covered walkways allow the three greenhouses to be seen in sequence without stepping outside, before reaching the open-air forest of columnar cacti near the entrance. The area also serves as a base for science education.

Nearby, the Petrified Forest, completed in 1999, and the Shenzhen Museum of Paleontology, opened in 2001, extend the visit, as do the cycad and medicinal plant gardens, opened in 2000 and renovated in 2017, and the Fern Conservation Center, opened in December 2020. The MTR guide suggests the garden as a day trip from Hong Kong, together with Hongfa Temple. Every winter since 2018 the garden has hosted the Shenzhen Forest Concert.