[1] She was born in Cradock, Eastern Cape, the eldest of at least 5 children of Ada Mary Hannibal and Albert John Alfred Trollip (1857-1943), a descendant of the 1820 Settlers, and a Cradock sheep farmer who lost his entire flock in a snow storm, leading to his moving to Southern Rhodesia in 1895.

His family joined him only in 1900, travelling by train to Bulawayo and then by the famous Zeederberg Coach Company to Gwelo, the Matabele Rebellion and Boer War having delayed their departure.

Her education commenced at the Huguenot College in Wellington, Western Cape where she, and South African mycologist Ethel Doidge, came under the influence of botany teacher Bertha Stoneman, botanist and author of 'Plants and their ways in South Africa'.

In 1915, she married Sidney Heneage Coates Palgrave, a Rhodesian civil servant.

They raised a family of three sons, Roderic (Deric) (1917), Keith (1926) and Paul (1929), all of whom regularly joined in excursions to the bush.