Known for their cheeky wit and striking array of merchandise, the flower sellers are always a worthwhile stop on a walkabout in the city.
The busy Cape Town commuter will overlook the significance of the flower market, but when Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Eid or Christmas approaches, it’s a must-stop. Oh, and of course many guilty boyfriends and husbands can thank the flower sellers for helping them escape a night on the couch.
Offering a wide range of arrangements, from dahlias and Casablancas to roses and sunflowers, the lively alleyway brings nature to an otherwise concrete-jungle environment. The plethora of fast-food restaurants and animated passers-by and a traffic-congested road make Adderley Street an unlikely location for such an explosion of character and colour. But the tenacious vendors, whose language and character can be as colourful as the flowers they sell, hold their own against car hooters, fumes and zealous pedestrians.
The market provides an income for many families. The sellers learnt the trade from their parents, who in turn learnt from their parents. Poppy, a flower seller who has been at it for more than 50 years, says her parents and grandparents were flower sellers and, even when she was young, she could not imagine doing anything else.
“Watching flowers in your house is like sitting in seventh heaven,” she tells me. Not particularly green-fingered myself, while walking around the market I can’t help fantasising about having a garden that could accommodate such splendour, not to mention colours that seem straight out of a Dulux ad.
Yep, Poppy’s right – it would be seventh heaven.
* This article was written by an Independent Newspapers journalism trainee as part of the company's cadet training programme, and is part of a Hidden Treasures of Cape Town project.