Botanical Confetti

Our petal team is employed from the marginalised communities bordering Tsavo East National Park, and we are proud to say that over 80% are women. Proceeds from the petals you purchase go towards supporting these communities, conserving habitats, and protecting elephants and all wildlife.

Since the beginning the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust has been deeply engaged with the local communities in which we work. Our farm shares a river boundary with a national park, which means encounters with wildlife are simply part of life for communities bordering this arid, remote corner of Kenya. This project goes to show that ethical and sustainable agriculture can work peacefully and productively alongside wildlife.

Our petal fields have been planted with over 13,000 plants in 6 different bougainvillea varieties, making us the biggest bougainvillea farm in the world! 

We have planted our bougainvillea in big blocks of beautiful colour, making each petal colour easier to pick. Each plant is tended to year round by our team, with cyclical phases of weeding, pruning, pinching and harvesting. 

We don’t use any pesticides or chemicals - just sunlight, rain, and air - and our free-ranging goats, which we use for milk, roam as they wish by day, creating the natural fertiliser the bougainvillea need to thrive.

Twice a year after the rains, our petals are harvested by our team of petal pickers by hand. Picking is a delicate process, which demands a keen eye. If the petals are picked too soon they will not dry, whilst if they are picked too late they will lose their colour and be too fragile to separate. 

During these harvests our team fill as many baskets of each petal colour as they can before the petals naturally drop to the ground. Fortunately, each variety of bougainvillea likes to flower at its own natural pace, which makes this meticulous process a little easier.

After the petals are picked, they are taken straight to the Drying Room for our 100% natural preserving process.  During this stage we rely on air alone to dry our petals whilst keeping a careful eye on natural humidity levels and airflow.

The team know each colour and variety of bougainvillea well, including how they need a slightly different amount of time in the Drying Room depending on their size and structure.

Once dried, the petals are transferred to the Sorting Room where they are separated, sorted, and graded. It is an interesting fact that what we call the ‘petals’ of a bougainvillea are actually modified leaves, called bracts. These colourful leaves outshine the plant's true petals, which make up the tiny, white flower in the centre. 

It is during our separating process where each individual bract is carefully removed by hand, one at a time, from around the white flower and off the stem. This is the most labour-intensive stage of the petal process, but also our confetti's greatest strength, as it creates the perfect, longest-lasting and most floatable petal!

Real flower confetti is often sold by volume in measurements of litres or pints, but we sell our petals by weight, which helps ensure you get the most petals for your money! 2 grams of our bougainvillea petals is equivalent to 1 very generous handful - or 1 full pint - of petals.

Our petals are available for purchase loose by the kilogram or in our beautiful packaged collection, which is 100% recyclable. Light and fly-away, they are perfect for throwing, creating petal paths, decorating tables and dancefloors, designing grand petal drop displays and much more.