Would you spend Sh144,000 on three trees? Last Friday, someone did at Planty Kenya, a small shop in Lavington, Nairobi. Three European olive trees, each at ShSh48,000, left the shelves in a single morning.
“These plants don’t stay in the shop for long. By the end of the week, not a single one will be left. Most of them are pre-ordered, and the rest are for walk-in customers,” said Lucy Kioi, who runs the shop.
While most plant shops in Nairobi sell seedlings and common shrubs, Lucy sells plants that take years, sometimes decades, to grow into what they are: mature olive trees, bonsai shaped over a lifetime of pruning, hybrid roses grafted onto thick trunks, and magnolias already old enough to flower.
She imports most of her stock from Europe and China, and when a shipment lands, it rarely lasts long. The batch that arrived less than 24 hours before we visited had 201 plants across 20 varieties, and most of them were already paid for.
Ask Lucy why anyone would spend Sh100,000 on a tree, and her answer comes down to this: people are not really paying for the plant itself, but for the years of waiting they get to skip.
The most expensive
A 200-centimetre olive tree costs around Sh100,000, while a smaller 120-centimetre one goes for Sh30,000, and a five-year-old magnolia sells for Sh85,000. A particularly thick, mature olive from an earlier shipment sold for Sh120,000, with the most expensive olive Lucy has ever sold going for Sh150,000.
Bonsai take years of training to develop their signature shape, and the current selection is priced at around Sh39,000, though a Juniperus chinensis bonsai from an earlier batch sold for Sh63,000.
“When someone has spent Sh50,000 on a plant, they become very invested in it,” Lucy said, adding that they want to know how to take care of it, where to put it, and how to keep it healthy.
Some plants come with a bonus: a mature calamondin, a cross between a mandarin orange and a kumquat, can already be bearing fruit when it arrives, and the same goes for olive trees, which will eventually produce olives that can be pressed into oil. Buyers end up with a fully grown ornamental plant instead of a young one that could take years to bear fruit.
Even Buddha’s Hand, a citrus fruit known for its odd, finger-like shape and cultural significance, sells for Sh10,000 for the fruit alone, while a pachira, more commonly called a money tree, goes for about Sh29,000.
Around 40 percent of Lucy’s customers are repeat buyers, and rather than shopping out of necessity, they tend to be hunting for something new.
“They want something different,” she said. “Some want a statement piece for their home or apartment, while others are looking for a particular variety they have seen online or encountered while travelling.”
Her customers range from apartment dwellers with barely a balcony to homeowners with large compounds and commercial clients furnishing offices or hotels.
Risky business
Getting a tree from a farm abroad into a shop in Lavington is complicated, and the process starts well before the plants ever touch Kenyan soil.
The Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service requires anyone importing plant material to get a permit before the shipment even leaves its country of origin, and every consignment also needs a phytosanitary certificate from the exporting country, along with, depending on the species, a permit under the international treaty covering endangered plants and animals.
“Imported plant material is inspected, and consignments without the required permits or documentation can be refused entry, destroyed or re-shipped at the owner’s cost,” Lucy said.
Even the soil is an issue, since plants cannot travel in the dirt they were originally grown in, as that soil can carry pests or diseases across borders, so instead they are packed in materials like coco peat for the trip and repotted once they arrive in Kenya.
Minimum capital
None of this comes cheap. Lucy says the minimum capital needed for a single import order is about Sh400,000, though most orders run between Sh600,000 and Sh1.5 million, depending on the type and size of the shipment. Sea freight is cheaper, but it takes much longer, and some plants need an extra month or two to recover once they land, which is why Lucy ships by air instead- a journey that takes about three days.
In January 2024, on her very first import order, Lucy brought in more than 100 bougainvillaea plants at about Sh1.2 million, for a batch that customers had already placed orders for.
“The plants arrived looking healthy, but they died within three days,” she said. She moved the survivors to her home in Tigoni, outside Nairobi, without expecting much. Three months later, they came back to life.
“When you are importing plants, anything can happen,” Lucy said. “They can leave the supplier looking beautiful and healthy, but by the time they arrive, the situation could be completely different. You just have to be ready for those risks.”
Could these plants just be grown here? Lucy thinks local propagation could eventually cut down the cost and risk of constant importing, though she does not see it replacing imports any time soon, since training a young plant into the size and shape customers want takes years on its own.
“For now, imports remain important because they provide the variety and maturity that customers want,” she added.