This is our story

This is our second shot at growing orchids. We first started while living in Hamilton NZ back in 1993 and over short space of time along with two (past) friends Malcolm Campbell and Bill Fransen amassed quite a collection taking up 3 14x9 tunnel houses.

The beginning:

The whole hobby started while we were out walking our dog. I saw an orchid plant in flower in the local chemist shop for sale and said to Jen that’s what I want to do grow orchids. If you know us you can only imagine her reply. We bought the plant, the next day there was another for sale , we brought that then on the third time the chemist told us he was wanting to sell his collection off due to health reasons. So here we go some three trailer loads of cymbidiums later we have the start of a collection. Yes I know, but these were export quality flowering plants.
So with a pile of orchids not place to really house them we started. The next step was to join the local society one of the best moves we made because yes you guessed it I got given heaps more orchids. You know how it goes, “ you better try this one , have you got one of these” and before to long a second orchid house was built.
The next stage was to see just how we were getting on with the growing and the eventual flowering, so we entered our first show. 5 first in the novice section. You could have bold us over. Unfortunately some three years after we started we got hit by a rouge frost. In fact it was two frosts on top of each other which dropped the temperatures in our tunnel houses down to –12 nearly 1000 plants be some of then just out of some 40 flasks I had brought in from Australia turned there toes up.
So We too went into hibernation for some 10years in the mean time shift locations and houses to settle in New Plymouth.
Now we are starting to get serious, focusing on Australian Dendrobium with a few other species just to keep the challenge there.

Orchids provide continuous joy hence we have named our collection Timeless Orchids.
The collection was originally started again in 2008 with some 10 plants. There are now in excess of 500 on display.
Three different growing environment exist.
Hot
Intermediate
Cold
Growing orchids is about having fun by enjoying what you do and seeing a fantastic end result in flower.
You also meet some great people on the way and you see some fantastic plants.

For those lucky enough to travel the Singapore Garden National Orchid Collection are a Must. Just mind blowing when you walk down pathways of vanda after vanda and under arch after Arch of oncidiums and there is all the restPhalonopis over a meter high, and that,s what makes it all worth while

Allan

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