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Garden Guru: Orchid Fever

The annual Orchid Festival is on until March 5th in the Princess of Wales Conservatory at  Kew Gardens. This year the theme is bursting with colour and verve as it honours that exuberant and intriguing country, India. If you ...

The annual Orchid Festival is on until March 5th in the Princess of Wales Conservatory at  Kew Gardens. This year the theme is bursting with colour and verve as it honours that exuberant and intriguing country, India. If you’re a fan of orchids it’s a not-to-be-missed event.

Meanwhile, I want to talk about orchids in your home. Did you know they are one of the best plants for your bedroom? A NASA study suggests that orchids give off oxygen at night -and the moth orchid also combats toluene, which is found is shoe polish (if you practice the arcane art of polishing your shoes).

The moth orchid – Phalaenopsis
As it happens the moth orchid is also the easiest one for beginners and comes in all sorts of lovely colours and patterns
from a deep velvety magenta
to a clean white,
via yellows,

stripey pinks and

blotchy bi-coloured beauties.
Maintenance
Well, I confess I haven’t had much luck with an orchid of any type – not even the so-called easy-care ones. They either die completely or struggle on for years leaving me with a potful of not-very-inspiring leaves. yet I have seen them bloom by the linear metre on friends’ window sills and even in offices where neglected is endemic.

It just isn’t fair – where am I going wrong? Actually I know where – I have suffered from ignorance mixed with bad luck. So here’s what you need to know – orchids are fussy!

They like light, but only north-facing; they hate draughts; and they only like soft water. Never, ever cut the aerial roots off (the slightly greying roots curling around the top – apparently some people don’t like the look of them), and never, ever remove them from the original plastic pots they’ve been rooted in.

If you live in a hard water area, use cooled boiled water from the kettle and either water them once a week with an eggcup-sized amount of soft water, or stand your orchid in a bucket and drench completely with soft water to replicate a tropical rain shower – let it soak for a minute in enough water to cover the compost. But don’t let any water sit in the area where the leaves cross over [if it does, dab away with tissue]. And there you have it. I’m tempted to say –  ‘SIMPLES’.

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