Cactus King by Earth Star

If I could give this place NO stars, I would. What a horrible and disrespectful owner. Disgusting; wanted to make us pay for things plants we did not break. If you want to attract customers, be nicer.

Cactus King is the holy grail for succulent and cactus lovers! I relied on the lovely Google Maps to guide me to this place. MAKE SURE you pay attention to the right turn on Stuebner Airline if you’re coming from the Galveston/​Kemah area. Immediately after that turn, the shop will be on your right. I wanted to point that out because I missed that turn and thought Google Maps gave me the wrong directions. The shop is huge!!! But parking is super limited!!! There isn’t a parking lot, so customer cars are tightly parked on the side. 70% of the store is filled with cactus plants and the other 30% is filled with succulents. There is a succulent tent to the right of the shop and a cactus tent to the left. The prices here are affordable and you can save a few bucks if you buy a lot. They have interesting «art» pieces displayed throughout the area. One art piece cleverly reused broken hoses and another one reused utensils. Make sure you don’t wear nice shoes, because the place can be muddy. Remember to spray on some mosquito repellent! The majority of their plants are in great condition so I would totally recommend coming here to buy your desired succulent/​cactus!

Really cute place to buy cheap cacti and succulents. Seriously watch where you’re going, i had thorns on me everywhere when I left. It was really hard to find someone working there, literally only was the only person there asides from the one worker.

This HORRIBLE business does not even deserve one star. They are just vile human beings who have no qualms ripping you off.
PLEASE BEWARE of this horrible vendor. I purchased (5) 1-​gallon plants from this vendor and I wish I could post a picture of what I actually received for the $ 60 I spent. What I received would NOT even fill a quart size plant offering, not even close. I was sure there just had to have been an honest mistake in the order fulfillment so I contacted Lyn Rathburn with a pleasant email explaining the situation. Well… I was met with someone who had absolutely NO interest in hearing my concern, addressing it, validating it, or making it right — not even for one second was that entertained. Rather, she was impolite, crude, accusatory, angry, rude, and had NO interest whatsoever in helping me. She basically wrote «You got what you bought» — as if that was supposed to make me feel better??? As if that’s customer service?
There is absolutely no way to return the order to her as she doesn’t accept returns –and– if you try to object to the charge via your credit card, she will then charge you an additional $ 125 for that chargeback — that’s actually in her fine print. My credit card company said they’ve never, ever seen anything like what’s in her fine print. I paid a LOT of money for 5 plants and what I got was literally almost nothing at all. This woman WILL RIP YOU OFF and not have any qualms about it, none whatsoever. BEWARE!

I’m not going to say any of the negative reviews were wrong, but what I will say is my stellar experience here. I felt like I was in succulent heaven.
My wonderful boyfriend took me here as a surprise and as soon as I saw the place, I FREAKED out in happiness. So many healthy and gorgeous succulents of ALL shapes and sizes. Everything was priced so well. I ended up getting 3 beautiful succulents to add to my collection. I am beyond happy. I will be back, to add more to my collection of succulents. Thank you for having all that I want, need and for giving my mans and me another place to love.
See you soon!

Again they should recieve zero stars. I emailed company about their terrible plants. My response was that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and should be happy with what I received. I called and spoke with the owner and he was a complete jerk and just talked over me the entire conversation. When he couldn’t intelligently answer my concers he hung up. Buyers please beware especially if ordering online.

So many succulents and cacti. All of different sizes. They carry every type. Such an awesome place for cacti lovers.

In re-​doing my front beds, I decided to go all cacti and succulents. Cactus King seemed like a great resource, as they seem to have good variety and prices. I proceeded to order a majority of my new plants from them. When the box arrived, it was a mess inside — plants had only been very loosely wrapped in newspaper, and there were no labels at all. Many of them were limp, or had leaves snapped off. Also, I had been charged $ 50 for shipping, when the postage label clearly said it was only $ 15. On top of that, one of the 1 gallon sized plants I ordered was actually a 4″, one other plant I ordered had been substituted for something else without my approval, and two plants I ordered were missing, whereas two other plants were included that I didn’t order at all. When I emailed Cactus King about all of these issues, I got the brush off saying that I was mistaken that wrong plants had been shipped, and about the size of the one that was supposed to be a gallon, and that she thought she’d been doing me a favor substituting the plant she did. As for the shipping cost, she said «more goes into the shipping cost than just postage.» Overall, completely unapologetic and unhelpful. No offer to fix the issues or offer a refund. Just completely horrible customer service. So buyer beware, do not order from here! I had much better experience ordering from online garden sites like Annie’s Magic Garden and Arid Lands Greenhouse. Even sellers on Etsy who do plants and cuttings have better customer service.

I don’t normally write reviews but my experience with this company merited one. I ordered 8 cactus through the Cactus King website. All of the cactus I ordered were supposed to come from pots, i.e. 4″, 6″, 1 gallon, etc. Three of the 4″ cactus look to be cuttings, they are not rooted, and one of these is severely wilted. Also, one of the cactus I ordered was substituted for another one that I did not choose. I really wish I would have read the reviews before I ordered.

I really loved walking through this place and checking out all the plants and kitschy décor. It reminded me a little of some places you’d find on Route 66 in the southwest.
The three and four inch pot cacti and succulents are priced very well, and they have some very interesting types, not your every day Home Depot choices.
They only take cash, and when I came up $ 2 short, they actually let me slide on the price! What a nice surprise!

This place is a free and interesting place to just to bring the family to walk around on a weekend afternoon. But I would never buy a cactus here because of the poor quality.
I am a landscape architect and long time member of the Cactus & Succulent Society of America and am all too familiar with the signs of disease due to being cared for inappropriately. Especially the indoor plants (euphorbia, etc) were in bad shape.
The friendly older man who runs it, the cactus king himself, is sweet but unfortunately he is lacking the advanced knowledge and effort it takes to put good, healthy product out there for professionals who are trying to build their own reputation.
There are much better options in the Houston area, even if it means driving an extra 30 min. Believe me it’s worth it!
—– also beware: If you do decide to buy something here, they only accept checks for some weird reason. So, bring your checkbook (don’t!) or if you don’t have one, be prepared to go to a nearby, run-​down check-​cashing place and pay extra to get a cashiers check for your purchase.

Ordered three plants through this website and received only two of them. I phoned twice, left a message, and followed up with an e-​mail and never heard back from them. When I phoned owner about the missing plant the third time, they told me they were out of stock. I then asked if they’d be refunding me, and they said «yes», however almost one month later I am still waiting. Just phoned them today and they said they couldn’t issue the refund because of my PayPal account /​credit card ?! WTF?
If you purchase from them, purchase in person, with cash (unless you enjoy being effed over).

Its like walking through a desert with hundreds of cacti options from tiny to huge. A bit pricey on some items but it is a great place to shop if your looking for cactuses. Just watch where you walk because you may get ‘stuck’ by something…

DO NOT EVER ORDER FROM THIS «BUSINESS»!!
I ordered 7 plants through their online process (paid via PayPal), and I received a box 4 days later.
The box contained only 5 plants (unlabeled and unwrapped… just loose in Styrofoam peanuts); they clearly used the PayPal invoice to check off the plants included (the PP invoice has a character limit, so cut off the last 2 plants). Additionally, 3 of the 5 plants were only cuttings. Nowhere on the site do they state they will send cuttings… the site does say, «all plants shipped bare root», which implies of course there ARE roots.
Also, plants are available in various sizes, and I ordered the second smallest on one plant — «1 gallon» (all others I ordered were the smallest size quoted, «4 inches»).
However, that one ‘larger’ plant was almost exactly 4″ long (was also one of the cuttings).
I immediately NICELY emailed them back explaining the issues and asked for replacements for the cuttings, and the 2 additional plants; or, a refund of the cuttings and the 2 not received.
I heard nothing from them, so called and left a message on their answering machine. I also called each day for a week — either no one answered or a worker answered that said the owner would be ‘back tomorrow.‘
After almost 2 weeks, I finally got a hold of the owner — he was unapologetic, rude, crass, and vulgar. He claimed the website clearly stated they could substitute cuttings, but was unable to tell me where such verbiage existed on the site (I would NOT have ordered cuttings of these species).
Finally, after realizing the owner had no intention of doing a thing, I opened up a PayPal dispute through PayPal.
PayPal found in my favor and refunded the money to me immediately.
Stay clear of this so-​called business completely!!!