What is Living Desert Plants?
Living Desert Plants is a specialist plant nursery that grows rare succulents and cacti. We place our focus on succulents that are not generally available in retail nurseries. Our range of plants is ethically produced and propagated before being made available. At Living Desert Plants, you will find the weird and wonderful that you cannot find easily elsewhere.
Living Desert Plants found its roots as a hobby-turned-business created by myself, Harry Lewis, in early 2018. I started the nursery using valuable knowledge gained from working in nature conservation. We are not a large team, and we run the nursery from home on a full-time basis. I manage most of LDP myself. Skye, my partner, assists me on a daily basis. My dad, Harry senior, grows and takes care of our seedlings.
Respect and admiration for nature is at the core of our ethos, and we are deeply committed to ethical propagation and the conservation of South Africa’s unique flora. We encourage the concept of ‘conservation through propagation’. We ensure that all our succulents are responsibly and artificially propagated, avoiding any harm to wild populations. By focusing on artificial nursery propagation, we not only protect biodiversity, but also provide our customers with healthy, well-acclimated plants. Many of the indigenous species we offer for sale are grown by ourselves from seed or propagations.
Where are we based?
Visitors are welcome to make an appointment any day of the week to visit the nursery in Onder Papegaaiberg, Stellenbosch. I am not always available, so be sure to contact me well before your planned visit to avoid disappointment. We do not advertise our exact address as the nursery is based at our home.
If you are not in Cape Town or surrounds, we can courier anywhere in South Africa with The Courier Guy or PUDO.
All our plants are legal, nursery grown specimens. We will never offer plants removed from nature. We have been certified by Cape Nature as a registered Grower and Seller of Protected Flora since 21/05/2018 and have a good working relationship with conservation authorities in South Africa. We have valid, up-to-date permits to grow, sell and export indigenous flora and can provide these on request.