AboutOrchids

Botanical gardens offer these extended exhibits to show off their orchid collections, and to provide a refuge from winter’s chill. Check out this season’s previous listing here. All of them make excellent Valentine’s Day activities.

February 1 – March 15
Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden’s Art & Orchids presents orchids with the works of North Carolina artist Patrick Dougherty. The garden is located in Belmont, North Carolina, near Charlotte.

February 1 – March 22
The Missouri Botanical Garden’s Orchid Show creates a tropical oasis in St. Louis. The Orthwein Floral Display Hall will feature orchids from the garden’s large collection. Two Orchid Nights will include live music and drinks.

February 1 – April 12
Atlanta Botanical Garden puts on Orchid Daze, which draws inspiration from Latin American artists. The exhibit will have orchid market weekends and orchid care clinics.

February 5 – March 2
Mille & une orchidées (A Thousand & One Orchids) will delight any flower lover in Paris. The displays will be in the Grandes Serres (Great Greenhouses) of the Jardin des Plantes.

February 8 – March 8
The Kew Orchid Festival celebrates the orchids of Indonesia in London. Kew’s Princess of Wales Conservatory will also host Orchids: After Hours, which will stage cooking demos, orchid expert talks, and Indonesian dance performances.

February 8 – March 22
The Orchid Show at Chicago Botanic Garden makes a great escape from winter. Ten thousand brilliant blooms will be arranged in artistic installations. The exhibit includes morning music, special photographers’ hours, and special evening events.

Vandas are orchid royalty, but they can be challenging to grow. They need sun, warmth, regular water, high humidity, and lots of space for their long, dangling roots. Since they don’t like being potted, they’re usually grown on mounts or in baskets, with their roots hanging freely. That makes them difficult for home growers, who have to battle low humidity to keep those roots happy. Fortunately, there’s a great trick. By placing the plant in a glass vase, it’s much easier to give it the moisture it needs.

I’d seen this method used over the years, and recently tried it myself for the first time. The amazing results are pictured here. I bought a small Vanda at an orchid show, and also bought a 5 inch (12.7 cm) wide glass container. Thick Vanda roots are firm enough to hold the plant in place in the vase, even when large blooms make it very top-heavy. As the roots grow, they curl around inside the glass. In warmer weather, I water it every day by filling the vase, letting it soak for a few minutes, and then pouring the water out. There’s always a little water left to evaporate and provide humidity. On hot days, I do this twice daily, or let the plant soak longer. It’s easy to add fertilizer weakly, weekly. At cooler times of year, I water as little as once a week, but still keep humidity levels high.

It’s best to use a vase with a wide opening, remembering that you’ll want to remove the plant occasionally to clean the glass. If lots of algae builds up on the roots, let them dry more between waterings. British botanist James Wong recently wrote about a slightly different method that works for growers who are really fighting low humidity. Keep the vase 20% full of water at all times. This guarantees the roots won’t dry too much. Growing Vandas in glass is an elegant and easy way to enjoy their big, bold, colorful blossoms.

Most people don’t think of orchids when they think of Montana, but Missoula’s Botanica, Ltd. is a great place for orchids. Brenda Oviatt and Bill Nerison have turned their hobby into a business which is devoted to growing endangered species. They specialize in the African Angraecoid family, which includes threatened varieties like Darwin’s Orchid, Angraecum florentum, Jumellea, and Oeoniella.

Oxford Botanic Garden has great orchids, and many other impressive plants, too. The photos in this post include a couple of orchids, more from the glasshouses, and sights from the surrounding grounds. The glasshouses feature fantastic collections of exotic tropical flowers, carnivorous plants, desert plants, and more.

Outdoors, the gardens offer ample winter interest, with Oxford’s historic architecture as the backdrop. During our visit, red penstemon flowers and brilliant purple berries brightened a chilly, gray December day. Lively fountains and colorful goldfish animated the garden. Bare trees, having already shed their leaves, showed off their majestic branch structures. Despite the cool weather, there was plenty to enjoy in this amazing garden.

London’s Kew Gardens is home to the Temperate House, the world’s largest Victorian glasshouse. It was closed for renovations for five years, and reopened in 2018. The skilled staff at Kew have regrown its lush greenery, and it’s full of remarkable plants. During my visit there in early December, I found a couple of Cymbidiums in bloom. One was a great, colorful species, Cymbidium tracyanum, known for big flowers with dramatic spots and stripes.

The Temperate House features plants that grow in mild climates around the world. The 628 foot (191 m) long structure is divided into five sections. There’s a large central area, which includes an upper walkway with great views. This space connects to two smaller octagonal glasshouses, which in turn connect to two medium-sized rectangular structures. Many of the 10,000 plants inside are rare and endangered in their native habitats. Kew works to conserve these species, and the Temperate House is essential to battling extinction.

Now that the building has been open to the public for over a year and a half, its plantings are maturing, and reaching for the sky. Comparing my photos to Dave’s pictures from almost a year ago, it’s easy to see that the forest canopy is growing taller and denser. As a refuge for rare plants, and a showcase for Kew’s botanical wonders, the Temperate House has a bright future.

RHS Garden Wisley doesn’t have Kew Gardens’ international reputation, or Oxford Botanic Garden’s ancient pedigree, but it does have plenty of amazing orchids. Wisley is located south of London in Surrey County. When Dave and I visited in early December, its large Glasshouse featured lots of elegant Lady Slippers, dazzling Stanhopeas, and other orchids in bloom.

In addition to the Glasshouse displays, we stumbled on orchids in one of the small Alpine Houses. The last two photos in this post show a delightful Pterostylis truncata, an Australian Greenhood species, flowering in the cooler temps.  It’s a good reminder that orchids may turn up in unexpected places.

Wisley has lots more than its glasshouses. Much of the garden was dormant, but it surely must be spectacular during the growing season. Dating to 1878, Wisley covers 240 acres (97 hectares.) I’ll have another post soon about some of the winter interest and more floral highlights. There are multiple public transportation options from London to the garden, some in as little as 45 minutes. Wisley contains several cafes and restaurants onsite, making it easy to spend the day there.

These lengthy exhibits spotlight prized plants, and offer warm, tropical escapes from winter’s chill. All of the events listed below run through Valentine’s Day and beyond.

January 4 – February 24
Find The Spirit of Orchids at Filoli Historic House & Garden in Woodside, California, south of San Francisco. The famous Filoli mansion hosts orchid displays and Chinese orchid art by Ming Lee. Photos from last year’s event hint at this year’s botanical riches.

January 9 – February 16
Denver Botanic Gardens’ Orchid Showcase features orchids in the Orangery and Marnie’s Pavilion. Visitors can enter three of their pictures in the Photo Contest, with prizes including orchid plants and gift cards.

January 18 – March 1
Orchid Mania takes over at Cleveland Botanical Garden. Admission is free for garden members.

January 18 – March 2
Longwood Gardens presents an Orchid Extravaganza, which “will create an indoor paradise of whimsy and warmth.” The gardens are located in Kennett Square, outside of Philadelphia. Buy tickets early before they sell out.

January 18 – March 8
Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania stages an Orchid and Tropical Bonsai Show: Out of This World. Enjoy otherworldly orchids and incredible tropical bonsai trees. Displays will include a 7 foot (2.1 m) tall orchid rocket, and the event will include educational programs on the weekends.

Welcome the 2020’s with orchids! All of January’s events are excellent opportunities to enjoy amazing flowers, take photos, talk to orchid experts, and buy plants. It’s a great recipe for a happy new year.

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Legendary American artist Georgia O’Keeffe painted extraordinary flowers, including orchids. The Winston-Salem Journal analyzes two of her portrayals of Cattleya hybrids. The first, Narcissa’s Last Orchid, 1940,  is depicted realistically. The second, An Orchid, 1941, is more abstract. Both paintings focus on the frilly flower lips. Orchid expert Arthur Chadwick ponders which varieties inspired these works. At the time, Cattleyas were popular as corsages. To learn more, check out the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Celebrate today’s solstice with more photos from my recent visit to Kew Gardens in London. These pictures are all from the Princess of Wales Conservatory, which is one of several large glasshouses at Kew. They include a few orchids, some brilliantly colorful bromeliads, and other tropical plants.

The conservatory features separate tropical and temperate zones for rainforest plants, ferns, desert plants, carnivorous plants, and, of course, orchids. It boasts incredible displays at any time of year, and offers a wonderfully warm respite from winter’s chill at this time of year.