Many years ago, when I shot a piece for television about butterflies at the Bronx Zoo, the curator of the butterfly show told me why many New York children did not like animals …because the only animals they knew were rats, pigeons, mice and cockroaches! But, she opined, “Butterflies are the ambassador to the insect kingdom.” This line stayed with me, and just as thistles and thorny wild rose might put people off, if the plant kingdom has an ambassador, it would be orchids.
Not only do the flowers of orchids capture our imagination and wow us with their colors and forms, but their species are represented throughout most of the continents. They grow everywhere from deserts to mountaintops, with some epiphytic forms growing in the crooks of trees. A few Northeastern natives grow on the forest floor or in meadows. For many years, I tended to see orchids as playthings of the effete; they were coveted and collected by wealthy intellectuals who loved their plants as much for their rarity as for their beauty.
But a trip to the orchid show, which fills the conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden for the next month, is a celebration not only of the rare but, thanks to the proliferation of orchids through tissue culture propagation, the commonplace. Plants that once were inaccessible are now available and even affordable, turning a show such as this not into a glance into the life of the rich and famous, but an experience of deciding which orchids we might like to bring into our own homes. Turns out, we can all house an ambassador in our humble abodes.
I had the pleasure of touring the exhibit with Marc Hachadourian, who manages the glasshouse horticulture at the garden and is an orchid expert. His book, Modern Orchids, is a must-have for anyone who wants to grow orchids at home. Marc is a fount of good information, whether one is a novice orchid grower or at the Nero Wolfe level (in literature, orchid collecting was always used as a sign of intelligence that presaged one’s preternatural insight into the nature of the world, such as in the Nero Wolfe novels, when the detective often solved mysteries while caring for his collection of rare orchids).
For most of us, the advice from Marc is straightforward and accessible: start with a genus that is easier to grow and give the plants the temperature and humidity they need (most benefit from cooler nights and warmer days) and, most importantly, spare the water (we tend to overwater them) and feed them regularly. Phalaenopsis and Paphiopedilum, moth orchids and ladyslippers respectively, are good for beginners. After walking through the display with Marc, I fell into an orchid fever, and am ordering a few species from Andy’s Orchids and Verdant Vivarium (two sources that Marc recommended), but in reality, could have also begun to treat my fever by simply heading around the corner at NYBG and into the gift shop where the array of orchids for sale was almost as dazzling as the display in the conservatory.
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A gardener grows through observation, experimentation, and learning from the failures, triumphs, and hard work of oneself and others. In this sense, all gardeners are self-taught, while at the same time intrinsically connected to a tradition and a community that finds satisfaction through working the soil and sharing their experiences with one another. This column explores those relationships and how we learn about the world around us from plants and our fellow gardeners.
