💬 Cultivo is online-only and we don't have a physical store — but to experience a slice of our carnivorous plant world, visit our Outdoor Show Garden at Strawberry Pot in Centurion.
🌿 What is the Cultivo Show Garden?
Experience the magic: If you’ve ever wished you could see carnivorous plants in the wild — this is the next best thing. Since we can’t exactly hop on a plane to the Carolinas to see the endangered Venus flytrap population, or head down to Florida to visit the purple pitchers of the US of A growing in their natural habitat, I’ve been creating something a little closer to home — a living display garden, designed to debunk a few myths, showcase their incredible resilience, and let you experience these amazing plants right here in South Africa.
🌱 What to expect
The show garden is an 8m x 3m working bog garden. It’s not a regular nursery setup with neat rows of shelves — it’s a living, evolving habitat exposed to the elements and designed to give you a glimpse into what these awesome plants are truly capable of. You’ll find more than three-quarters of the world’s known carnivorous plant species growing together in one space — from towering trumpet pitchers and mossy groundcovers to delicate sundews and colourful flytraps.
The garden is constantly evolving. Since many of these plants are also listed for sale online, I rotate stock and plant out in sections and phases as time allows. The big winter clean-up and replanting usually kicks off around March each year and leading up to spring, divisions or special specimens are added to the website as they become available.
This giant bog garden is part of my personal, privately owned collection, built up over many years with a collector’s eye and a lot of love. These plants are so close to my heart – while some started off as a mere seed, others are rare imports sourced from top growers around the world. Each plant has a story, and many play a key role in Cultivo’s breeding program — used for exciting new crosses, seed parents and divided in winter for limited releases to fellow South African plant lovers.
And because they’re grown fully outdoors, they’ve been through it all — frost, floods, hailstorms, heatwaves — and they’re still thriving. It’s a great way to see just how tough and resilient carnivorous plants really are, and what they look like fully grown in real-life conditions. You’ll also get ideas for which species can be grown together and how they change with the seasons.
🌸 Tip: Try to pop in around late October, when spring turns into summer — that’s when the trumpet pitchers put on their best display. They start the season with flowers, and only once those have done their job (or faded), do the plants begin producing their spectacular pitchers. It’s their clever way of keeping pollinators safe before turning into hunters!
🛒 Can I Buy Plants I See in the Garden?
🌱 You’ll find two sales tables with a small but curated selection of plants available in-store at Strawberry Pot. These plants are already potted in the correct soil and ready for the upcoming growing season — no transplanting needed until next winter.
As most of these are once-off collector items, many of these rare beauties are listed in the Carnivorous Plants for Collectors section of the (this) website. So if you can't find what you're looking for in-store, you can always order online — I'm happy to send your order to Strawberry Pot for free pickup
And the best part? Visiting the garden is completely free.
Strawberry Pot is one of our longtime retail partners and the show garden is open during their normal nursery hours. I don’t work from there (I’ve got a full-time career besides plants lol), but if you’d like to meet up or ask questions, just drop me a message a few days ahead. It’s always nice meeting online customers in real life 💚
Address: 📍 202 Hendrik Verwoerd Drive, Centurion - Get directions here
