Here is an interesting purple cactus called the Santa Rita Prickly Pear.
I used to think freezing caused these cacti to become purple but in fact they turn from green to purple naturally.
Here you can see a variation of green and purple pads. I'm not sure if the older pads eventually become green as they get thicker.
I just read up about these cacti and almost all parts of the plant are edible. The pads are kind of tangy and the prickly pears are tart and sweet.
These things grow easily in Southern Arizona and make a nice colorful landscaping plant that is also tasty.
In Southern Arizona most traditional landscaping doesn't survive for lack of water. But barrel cacti, and many other pad shaped cacti flourish.
This cacti also turns just slightly purple but has more elongated pads. I suspect it is edible as well. The thorns on this guy are a bit too long to mess with.
Here is a transplanted Santa Rita cactus. In a few years it will have many pads if the javelinas don't get to it.
Ocotillos are another easy desert plant to cultivate. People often plant them in rows to form a fence for their yard. No one would dare try and cross a fence full of thorns like this.
Just in case someone gets past your ocotillo fens you can plant landmines of fishhook barrel cacti. These ones have strong thorns that the Native Americans used for sewing leather.
The fruit is edible and sort of tastes like a bland okra. Probably not worth getting pierced for such a bland treat.
Agaves grow like weeds here. Plenty to harvest if you want to make tequila. They are also a low maintenance security landscaping device lol.
If any of your cactus do end up dying then you are left with interesting skeletal looking wood. I think this one came from a large cholla. An artist project could be to run some tube lighting on the inside to project interesting shadowd all over the place.
That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)