News
Simon awarded RHS Westonbirt Medal for his work with orchids
I had a lovely day out last month at the RHS Halls at the Royal Horticultural Society's Awards cermenony and it was an honour to recieve the Westonbirt Medal from Ruth Willmott (photo left)
It was also a pleasure to have Tengku (our Sarawak conservation partner) as my guest (below) to represent all the wonderful plant and conservation people we are lucky enough to know and work with across the tropical world.
New show date - Bristol Rare Plants and Orchid Fair
We are very happy to announce that we will be at the Bristol Rare Plants and Orchid Fair on 26th May.
The event is a new one organised by our good friend Dino Zelenika and we hope it will become a regular feature of the horticultural calendar.
Plant Passports
We have added a few new species to our shop today. You will see that we issue a plant passport with all of our plants in line with DEFRA regulations. This regulation helps maintain plant health across the UK and now all nurseries selling online need authorisation to issue UK plant passports and are subject to plant health inspections.
Have a look at our new Orchid Culture page describing how we grow cool orchids from South and Central America
Time to shade your orchids.
Yesterday we put the first layer of shading on our Cloud Forest Greenhouse. The layer of 40% shade is fixed to the outside of the structure on panels made from roofing battens. External shading is very effective at keeping greenhouse temperatures down during the heat of the summer. We will add an aditional layer of shading to some of the roof in May.
Our Himalayan greenhouse will get its shading next week
We are delighted to have a record 22 orchid species for sale on our ETSY shop today. Our aim is to offer a wide range of unusual species, especially miniatures, grown here in the UK in our Portland nursery.
A big thank you to Wessex Orchid Society for a great show today. Lovely to meet up with so many old friends and make so many new ones.
Our next show will be Gardener's World at the NEC 13th-16th June, as part of the UK International Orchid Show - more information from the UK International Orchid Show website here.
Isle Of Portland Orchids is doing its first show on 2nd March 2024. A big thank you to the Wessex Orchid Society for inviting us to bring a small display and our sales table.
We are having lots of fun working out a display layout and hope that people will find it interesting. Do come along and say hello.
If anyone would like to buy plants before hand for us to bring to the show, just order on our ETSY shop and we will refund all postage and bring to the show.
We are launching online sales from our nursery on 24th January 2024. We will provide a link to our online shop on our website.
We have a couple of sales events planned for 2024.
Bournemouth Orchid Society meeting - Friday, 26th January 2024, 7pm to 10pm, 39 Christchurch Rd, Boscombe, Bournemouth, BH1 3NS. Simon will be speaking on 'Orchids in cultivation and the wild'
Friends Of Bristol University Botanic Gardens - Thursday 15th February 2024 7.30-9pm
Simon will be giving a talk titles - The Sarawak Orchid Project
This lecture will take place at the Frank Theatre, Wills Physics Laboratory, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TL. (This is where lectures took place before the pandemic.) Lectures are free to Friends on production of their membership card. Guests will be asked for a donation (suggested £5).
We have recently upgraded our propagation laboratory and it has been officially opened by our volunteers Izzy and Elora. We have lots of seed to sow and seedlings to replate so it is great to have a shiny new lab to work in.