Welcome to our nursery

UNUSUAL AND RARE PLANT SPECIALISTS

Collecting plants is in my genes.

My maternal grandmother filled her garden with aloes and gloxinias, my Oumie tended her African violets with quiet devotion, my mother could never resist bringing another plant home — and when she passed away, my father discovered his own deep love of gardening. Plants have always been part of our family life.

Petal Faire is my little piece of heaven in Colbyn, Pretoria — a nursery run from our home, shaped by years of collecting, sharing and learning. What began as a love of plants has grown into something much richer: friendships, conversations under trees, and the simple joy of finding that one special plant you didn’t even know you were looking for.

I spend long weekends and holidays travelling across South Africa in search of unusual and interesting varieties. There is something deeply satisfying about discovering a plant that is not often seen — the kind sometimes known only by its Latin name.

In Road Rage by Ruth Rendell, she writes:

“There are gardens and gardens… Most of them are full of stuff from the local garden centre, but the other kind, the rare kind, contains plants you hardly ever see, plants her father called ‘choice’, the ones that only have Latin names…”

That idea feels very close to my heart. I have always been drawn to the “choice” plants — the rare, the unusual, the quietly beautiful.

Petal Faire Nursery is a small retail nursery run from our home in Colbyn, Pretoria, South Africa. We stock a wide range of rare and hard-to-find plants, both exotic and indigenous. You are warmly invited to visit, wander, and share in the joy that these plants bring to our home.