News

Shows 2025 Update

We will be selling plants at several shows in 2025. Here are the dates confirmed so far


Wessex Orchid Society Show - Saturday 1st March 2025, Portchester Parish Hall, 1 Assheton Court, Castle Street, Portchester PO16 9PS. 12:00 - 4:00pm

RHS Orchid Show - 14th-16th March 10am-4pm. RHS Garden Wisley, Wisley Lane, Surrey, GU23 6QB. 

Bristol Plant Show on Saturday 5th April 2025 St. Philip and St. Jacob church, Tower Hill, Bristol, BS2 0JA 10am-5pm

UK INTERNATIONAL ORCHID SHOW at BBC GARDENERS WORLD LIVE June 12th – June 15th, 2025, NEC Birmingham

Gloucestershire Rare Plants & Orchids Fair 2025, 10 am to 4.30 pm, Saturday 5 July, St. Mary de Crypt Church, Southgate Street, Gloucester,GL1 1TP



Why not join in the New Year Plant Hunt

Every year the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland asks people to take part in a New Year Plant Hunt to generate long term data that helps us to understand how our wild and naturalised flowers are responding to climate change.

The Plant Hunt runs from 29th December to 1st January and you can register to be part of the plant hunt here

We will let you know what we find on our plant hunt on Portland.


Our first Portland Plant Hunt hunt was on the Chesil Beach and Hamm Common where we found 16 species in flower. Ours is just one of 400 surveys already uploaded to the results page here.

Happy Christmas from Isle of Portland Orchids

Annie and Simon wish you all a very merry Christmas.

Here is the sunset from Christmas eve and we hope that you Christmas is just as golden.

Order Christmas cards and messages in your Christmas orchid orders 

If you are ordering orchids as a Christmas present from our ETSY shop you can buy a card means that we will include it with your order with your own message choice. 


The cards are all purchased from Dorset Wildlife Trust, at the Chesil Wild Centre, where both of us volunteer to do our bit to help and protect our local flora and fauna - keep an eye on our website for details of the summer flower walks we lead on the reserve every summer.

By the way our last ordering date for pre-Christmas delivery is Wednesday 18th December.

Turn on the Christmas light 

Most towns are getting set to turn on their Christmas illuminations but here at our nursery it is all about 'turning on' the natural winter light for our orchids.

We have now removed the last of our external shading to the greenhouses so that our plants can make the most of our rather feeble British winter light.

We have also cleaned the inside of the glass to remove any algae.

Indoors we have moved our orchids nearer to the windows to increase their access to light now that the summer sun is a distant memory.

 Orchid Workshop on Portland (with Friends of Portland Museum) 12th December

We are running an orchid workshop organised by the Friends of Portland Museum (an absolutely brilliant museum if you haven't visited).

All welcome, details on the poster shown here.

To book email portlandmuseum@gmail.com or call 01305821804

 Mounted Orchid Month

We have been asked so many questions about growing mounted orchids that this month is our 'Mounted orchid Month' and we have added a new culture page all about how we grow orchids in the rewarding way. Check out the new page here

There are lots of mounted orchids on our ETSY shop - just search 'mounted' and they all come up.

 New talk available

Simon gave a talk to Bournemouth Orchid Society last week entitled 'why has the name of my favourite or chid changed and what does it mean for my collection'. The talk explores the reasons and the science behind the large number of name changes since the 1990s, focusing on some of the most popular orchid families amongst growers, and suggests ways for orchid enthusiasts to navigate the changes and learn from their plants and the scientific community.

If you would like to book Simon to talk to your orchid society please email us on isleofportlandorchids@gmail.com

 Six new species available on our ETSY shop

Today we updated our ETSY shop including six new species we haven't had available before.

With around 500 species in our collection it will be a while before we have offered all of them but we are busy propagating all we can.

100 species in our Orchid information pages

Today we updated our orchid information pages and found we have reached a milestone with 100 of our species now with full information.

It is amazing how quickly a web site grows.

With around 400 more species in our collection we will be busy for a while yet but why not check out some of our lovely orchids already featured.

Portland's native orchids in full bloom

We are lucky to live surrounded by native orchids on Portland and tghis week the Pyramidal Orchids are at their best. The group shown here are on the nature reserve by the Wild Chesil Centre where we volunteer for Dorset Wildlife Trust as outdoor engagement volunteers, talking to the public about the flora and fauna on the reserve - hope to see you there someting.

On our way to Gardeners World Live

We will be posting a new orchid species later but for now we are travelling up the A34 towards the NEC for Gardeners Worl Live with a van full of orchids.

Do come and find us if you are heading to the show. The show is open to the public on Thursday, Friday , Saturday and Sunday.

We will send photos of our display and sales table as soon as we are set up.

A big thank you to Dino and his team at the Bristol Rare Plants and Orchid Fair

We are just back form a lovely day at new Bristol Rare Plants and Orchid Fair at St John's Church, Bristol.

We were really impressed with the number and diversity of plant enthusiasts visiting the event and the organising team lead by Dino Zalenika need huge congratulations. The venue is a fascinating historic building too.

It was lovely to meet so many old orchid friends and to make so many new ones. We are already looking forward to next years event and we will share details as soon as we know them.

We enjoyed the oportunity to put together a display from our collection and include some of our new display props including our little lighthouse - the perfect spot for some mini miniature species to look their best.

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.



...and our new Orchid Culture page describing how we grow Warm Asian Orchids



Have a look at our new Orchid Culture page describing how we grow cool orchids from South and Central America



We have restocked the Isle of Portland Orchids Shop this morning



Check out our first page of Orchid Culture at Isle of Portland Orchids

Mounting orchids on cork bark


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.

Find our ETSY shop here 





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.






Our online shop is now live. 






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). 

Full details here 





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.