Rare Plant Fairy started in the guest bedroom of a downtown Detroit apartment in April 2020. Our founder, Jocelyn Ho, listed a few of her rare plants online to free up space. They sold out in a weekend, and the $1,000 they brought in told her something she hadn't expected: there was a real market for what she'd been quietly collecting for years.

Jocelyn grew up in Hong Kong raising African violets as a kid and never stopped collecting. What began as a pandemic side project quickly outgrew the apartment, then a small showroom, then the next space after that. Today, Rare Plant Fairy is the largest rare plant company in the United States, operating out of a 14,000 square foot facility in Detroit with a team of more than 25 people, an in-house tissue culture lab, and over 100,000 customers across all 50 states.

We're the official US grower of DocBlock anthuriums and an AAPI woman-owned business. Jocelyn was named an EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2025 and a Crain's Detroit Business 40 Under 40. None of that was the plan in 2020. The plan was just to share plants we love with people who love them too. That's still the plan.

What Makes Us Different

We grow what we sell. Most rare plant sellers are resellers. We're growers. The vast majority of our inventory is propagated in-house at our Detroit nursery and at RPF Labs, our wholly-owned tissue culture facility. When you buy from us, you're buying a plant our team raised from cutting or culture, in conditions designed to mirror the home you'll bring it into.

We have the genetics other sellers don't. As the official US grower of DocBlock anthuriums, we offer access to one of the most coveted genetics programs in the world. We also work directly with breeders and growers around the globe to bring varieties to the US market that you won't find elsewhere, and we're constantly expanding the catalog through new partnerships with breeders whose work deserves a wider audience.

We're built for every collector. Whether you're buying your first philodendron or hunting for a six-figure unicorn, we want you here. Our Grower's Choice plants start under $50. Our Curated Collection drops weekly with the rarest specimens our team can produce. Same nursery, same standards, same care.

RPF Labs

RPF Labs is our state-of-the-art tissue culture laboratory and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rare Plant Fairy. It's where we propagate rare cultivars at scale, develop new varieties, and pursue conservation work that matters to us. We've successfully cloned the ghost orchid, one of North America's most endangered native orchids, as part of a long-term effort to reduce poaching pressure on wild populations and make conservation propagation accessible to the next generation of growers.