If Margarita Nyambura could speak to her 12-year-old self, the girl who used to stop by a prison fence each morning to pick orange and yellow flowers, she would tell her to keep going.
Growing up in Embu, where her father was the auditor in charge of Eastern Province, Margarita lived a relatively privileged life. The family compound was tended by gardeners who maintained tidy, traditional plantings. The grass was always neatly trimmed, and her mother planted flowers, too-the common types that filled most homes those days.
What intrigued her even more were the improvised gardens created by police officers nearby. Old bathtubs had been transformed into planters, teaching her an early lesson that would stay with her for life: Almost anything could become a garden.
Without money to buy plants, she scavenged for cuttings from fences, rescued seedlings from roadsides and collected whatever neighbours were willing to share. Gardening was not yet a hobby.
It was play, discovery and a growing fascination with colour.
When her family moved to Wangige in Kiambu in 1997, she brought along just one money plant. From this, everything else grew. At first, some plants died due to incorrect lighting and insufficient or excessive watering.
Mapping the garden
‘To sustain a plant, you need to buy compost, containers and planters,’ she says.
Prayer plants, for example, are delicate and sensitive, and many people find them difficult to keep alive. She moved hers around the garden, testing different levels of light and humidity, until she found the right spot.
She learnt how to make her own compost, when to use goat manure versus chicken manure, and how to irrigate using inverted bottles so that the plants could survive during her working week. She invested in a water storage facility large enough to sustain the garden throughout the dry season.
Her profession took her across the world. She spent two years in Accra, Ghana, three in Lagos (Nigeria), then moved on to Sudan, Switzerland, Barcelona (Spain), Australia, Prague (Czech Republic), and New Zealand. From every country, she returned with a plant – a phormium from New Zealand, cuttings from Mexico and Paraguay, and bromeliads wherever she could find the right humidity.
‘I’ll show you the castle cactus I planted in 1998-it’s still there. Still tiny.’
Her favourite plant is the foxtail fern, which hangs from elevated planters. It is dense and green and thrives on neglect.
Starting again after an accident
‘It’s so lush. You don’t have to worry about it flowering excessively because it is a perennial plant,’ she says.
In 2021, her gardening story was interrupted. She broke her leg in a road accident, and while she was recovering, almost all of her plants died. Species sourced from four continents, plants grown since the 1990s, and varieties she would never find again withered away despite her best efforts.
When she could finally walk again, only a handful of plants had survived. These included the Monstera, which remained in its original 1997 pot; the castle cactus from 1998, which had barely moved but endured; and two snake plants-one green and one variegated.
‘What you’re seeing right now is a fresh collection,’ she says.
Margarita believes that plants are sensitive to the people around them and register presence and absence.
By 2022, she had started again. By 2025, she had amassed a collection of over 2,000 plants, including bromeliads, foxtail ferns, prayer plants, castle cacti and a pickle plant that had been growing since 2012.
Now aged 53, Margarita has never employed or sought the help of a florist.
‘That’s my therapy. I just do it.’
Enter the garden ‘rooms’
Unlike many homes with flat lawns, Margarita has divided her garden into ‘rooms’, and each section is assigned a day of the week.
‘You can’t do everything. I’ve had to divide it up.”
There is a bromeliad section beneath a wide tree where the canopy keeps things cool; a propagation workstation built around a repurposed stump; a butterfly corridor replanted with Eugenia hedging; a tropical section near the blue rainwater drums, and a Halloween corner where hollowed pots filled with succulents await October and candlelight.
The lawn is covered in Pemba grass, a drought-resistant variety that requires minimal water and thrives in hot conditions. She opted for it after trying Kikuyu grass, which requires moderate to high rainfall, and Arabic grass, which struggles in dry conditions and needs frequent watering-neither of which was suited to the water-efficient compound she had designed.
The 1996 cottage sits quietly within it all. She chose it for its low roof and compact size, allowing the garden to occupy most of the land.
‘I needed more garden than house.’ Having watched people her age build five-bedroom homes and live in just two rooms, she saw no need for a big house.
Plants dedicated savings account
Margarita knows exactly where every plant is, when each one arrived, and where the sun hits at 8am and where the shade falls by 4pm. She has mapped the light across the entire compound and positioned everything accordingly. She also has a dedicated savings account for her plants, covering pots, planters, fertiliser, tools and water storage.
‘You know how you register for a gold membership? I do the same for my plants,’ she says.
Her children, who used to complain that the garden received more attention than they did, now walk through the grounds and say, ‘We’ve created a home.’
Every evening, after watering and weeding, Margarita sits down with a glass of wine. ‘It is a heavenly feeling. I always give thanks.’
Lessons from the 40-year journey
Forty years of growing things have also shaped her attitude towards money.
‘I’ve learnt to be patient with money, just like I have to wait for the plants to grow and the seeds to flower,” she says.
‘Whenever a deal comes along, you must either take it immediately or miss it,’ she says.
The third is spreading her investments. She does not grow just one type of plant, and she does not put all her money in one place.
Margarita recognises a bad investment because she has made them in her own garden. The Duranta hedge has beautiful golden-edged leaves, but it spreads beyond its boundaries and attracts green snakes. She plans to remove it and replace it with Eugenia, which grows more slowly but has golden new growth that can be trimmed cleanly.
“Sometimes you plant something and realise you don’t like it, and you have to accept the loss,” she says.