Rare Plant Fair

Goodbye to the 2026 Rare Plant Fair season 👋🌿

From The Bishop’s Palace in March to Llanover House in September — 14 fairs, wonderful gardens, specialist nurseries and thousands of plants.

Thank you to everyone who joined us.
See you in 2027.

Behind the plants visitors see at the fairs is a working nursery full of stock plants, machinery, propagation, irrigation — and a great deal of accumulated horticultural knowledge.

Hillview has been here since 1986.

Between the Fairs 🌿

Once the plant fair season is over, the nurseries certainly don’t stop.

At Hillview Hardy Plants in Worfield, autumn means working through around 1,000 auricula stock plants — splitting, repotting and preparing them for another season.

It’s a job that takes roughly two months.

A finer sift, then the tiny seed is mixed with silver sand and sown thinly.

And then the long bit: waiting.

Three years later… this is the result.

Once the plant fair season is over, it’s not all sitting about enjoying life…

Heather (Calluna vulgaris) from seed — collecting, drying, breaking down and sifting the seed.

Between the Fairs.