Everything’s coming up…orchids?
As we approach Valentine’s Day and you try to decide whether to buy your sweetheart tulips, roses or carnations, consider another type of flower to help you profess your everlasting love and devotion—an orchid.
“When I had my retail flower shop in San Francisco, one of my favorite things to sell was an orchid plant, because they’re really a lot easier to take care of than people think, and they last a long time,” says Steve Podesta, owner of Steve Podesta-SF Productions, an interior-scape and visual design production company based in St. Helena. The company uses live flowers and trees as well as props to create shows and events for corporate clients (such as Macy’s, Marshall Fields, Target and the MGM Grand) throughout the United States.
“When you’re retailing flowers—which I no longer do—you want to sell a floral product somebody is going to receive and really enjoy, and not have any problem with,” he says. “It should also last a long time. Orchids are that type of a gift. They’re a unique plant in that way; when giving a gift of flowers, to give an orchid, as opposed to a tulip or carnation, is a beter choice. It’s always perceived as a much nicer gift. A dozen roses will last five to seven days. For less money, you can send someone an orchid plant that will last a lot longer.”
Orchids are among the largest family of flowering plants, with native species on every continent except Antarctica. There are approximately 22,000 accepted species (and perhaps as many as 35,000, since classification differs among academics), and more than 100,000 hybrids.
The orchid family includes a wide spectrum of plants, and while most people not familiar with orchids would first think of the familiar Phalaenopsis (found at Costco, Safeway and Trader Joe’s) or other tropical orchids, the family also includes species that live in cloud forests and deserts. Even the homely vanilla plant is in the orchid family. New species are discovered all the time, including one found in 2007 in a bog in Yosemite Park. And yes, even the North Bay is host to some native species, although most are quite different from what most people would perceive as being an orchid.
“California has approximately 34 native species, 12 of which can be found in Marin County,” explains Debra Atwood, owner of Napa-based Napa Valley Orchids, which carries not only a variety of orchids but also a large selection of growing supplies ranging from cork bark and fertilizer to humidity trays and light meters. “However, most people wouldn’t recognize them as orchids. When most people think of orchids, they think of something highly tropical—and indeed, the majority of orchids are tropical. The orchids we see in Marin County are more grass-like, with very small, uninteresting flowers.”
Personal passion
Of all the plants and trees of the world, orchids have certainly inspired an unrivaled passion and devotion. The American Orchid Society’s 85-year history is a testament to this fact, as are its 400 affiliated societies around the globe. So what makes orchids so special? Why are so many people drawn to them? Why have so many people made an extensive hobby out of growing and maintaining orchids?
“When it comes right down to it, it’s an addiction,” quips Vence Brown, acting president of the approximately 50-member Napa Valley Orchid Society. “In my opinion, it’s like a little child who knows there’s candy in the house he can’t have, but he always wants it. Everybody wants to be able to grow orchids. There are so many out there that are different shapes, styles and colors. With all the new breeds that are coming up and the new species that are being found, there’s so much variety out there it’s unbelievable.”
Orchids have maintained the reputation of being a challenge to grow and cultivate, though some experts say it’s really not that difficult—as long as you completely change your mind-set and don’t rely on traditional horticultural methods.
“The problem is, orchids that have been bred for domestic sales have been crossbred to make them easier to nuture, but wild species are possibly the most finicky flower to culture, because you have to duplicate their wild environment perfectly for them to thrive,” says Brown.
Atwood is a little more encouraging: “It’s not difficult, it’s just different,” she explains. “I think the reason people are intimidated by them is because, if they’ve only had a couple, they’ve probably killed them. There’s a quote on my website that says, ‘An old orchid grower once told me that an orchid expert is someone who’s killed a thousand orchids.’ And that’s so true. If you follow standard gardening procedure—or standard houseplant procedure—you’re not going to be successful.”
But most likely, it’s this mystique, this perceived challenge, that draws both amateurs and professional growers alike into the beautiful world of orchids. And with increasing demand has come an increasing supply, lowering the cost of orchids and making them accessible to more consumers.
“I know that back in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, orchids were a lot more expensive,” says Atwood. “I think we’re figuring out, with DNA and other studies, how to grow orchids better. I think orchids are definitely more affordable and more available to the general public, and I think people are exposed to them more now than ever before.”
With that increase in popularity has also come increased competition for local growers as more and more drugstores, supermarkets and hardware stores carry orchids, albeit a limited selection. However, most growers don’t view this as competition so much as simply another way consumers are getting exposed to and falling in love with orchids.
“The quality of Phalaenopsis you’re going to find at the grocery store or the hardware store isn’t the same quality of plants I carry,” says Atwood. “So in a way, the grocery stores have helped my business, because they’ve introduced people to orchids. When people are ready to bump it up a notch—get something a little nicer or try to actually grow one—that’s when they find me.”
Boarding quarters
Regardless of whether consumers become addicted or simply buy an orchid every now and then as an alternative to cut flowers, the increasing popularity is good for local orchid growers and has strengthened revenues for both the traditional grower and those in specific niches or who provide ancillary services.
Robert Pike, owner of Vintage Orchids in Healdsburg, started his business by accident, 15 years ago, as a way to offset his costs of growing orchids as a hobby. This helped him identify a niche that was lacking in the area. He has since built the company on serving a specific market, namely, growing and selling Paphiopedilum orchids, otherwise known as Lady Slipper orchids.
“It was a way of paying the bills, basically,” explains Pike. “Orchids, when you’re growing them as a large hobby, tend to be somewhat expensive. We’ve developed a niche within the orchid business, the Paphiopedilums. And that’s what we’re known for pretty much worldwide.”
Even though he does very little direct sales, Pike has grown his business through mail order and Internet sales, as well as participating in shows, such as the upcoming San Francisco Orchid Society’s 56th Annual Pacific Orchid Exposition, which takes place February 28 through March 2 at Fort Mason Center’s Festival Pavilion. This year’s theme, “Orchids Gone Wild!” will feature more than 150,000 orchids from all over the globe, in every color, shape and size, and promises to be a “mind boggling, jaw dropping, and eye-popping experience.”
Another niche of the orchid business has been filled by Mary Nisbet, owner of Bolinas-based California Orchids, which has been providing orchid boarding for more than 20 years. “I worked at the Rod McLellan Company for about three or four years. Then my boss and I quit, and we started boarding collections for people,” explains Nisbet.
“McLellan started the boarding business as a way to get people to buy orchids. At that point orchids were only for rich and famous people; you’d come in and buy an orchid, and they’d say, ‘You don’t have to worry about growing it, we can grow it for you.’ So they’d grow it, deliver it when it was in flower and then pick it up when it was out of flower. It was just sort of a side service they offered to motivate people to go ahead and buy plants and not be afraid of growing orchids.”
Because boarding wasn’t it’s core competency, however (growing and selling orchids was Rod McLellan’s primary business), the company struggled. Nisbet and her business partner decided to start a business that focused on boarding. The partnership split up after a few years, and Nisbet has continued California Orchids on her own since 1985, with 95 percent of her business today consisting of boarding orchid collections. She currently has a mailing list of more than 700 people, including hobbyists, collectors and novices.
“When I started boarding, it was sort of an elitist thing,” says Nisbet. “And then, as the price of orchids came down, lots more people started to do it. There were a lot of people who weren’t particularly interested in orchids for themselves but just as a status symbol or as any other kind of flower. Now, I’d say it’s sort of going back a little bit to how it was in the beginning, where clients need some kind of an attraction to the orchids themselves, or they have to be way into spending the money to have a really good, unusual collection of things.”
Nisbet credits much of the increasing popularity of orchids to the increase in supply, coming partly from hybrids that can be mass-produced, primarily in Asia.
“It remains to be seen if the mystique will hold up through the huge influx of orchids from Asia at this point, because they’re getting quite common,” says Nisbet. “One of the things that’s amazing about them is they’ve never been this common before. It has to do with many things, but it seems to me there was a tipping point where the commercial interest realized that there was a lot of money to be made.
“People realized you could study orchids and then grow and produce them using the same principles you would with any other plant. You could figure out how to maximize the growing speed. And they’ve really figured it out in Taiwan; they produce acres of tiny Phalaenopsis and send it to growers in the United States, who flower it. It all has to do with pushing the plant, developing hybrids that grow a little faster and that travel and ship well, and that have a little bit of different color. So it’s a snowball effect—they’re popular because they’re more available, and they’re more available because they’re popular.”
While boarding clients of California Orchids used to have at least, on average, 10 Phalaenopsis in their collections 20 years ago, today Mary Nisbet advises clients that it’s not worth paying her to grow certain varieties. The market has changed so much in even just the past 10 years that one can buy a standard Phalaenopsis and throw it away when it’s finished blooming for less money than it costs to board the plants. Most of her clients today only board unique species that are much more costly.
Asked whether the influx of orchids at grocery and hardware stores has affected her business, Nisbett admits, “I’ve always been expecting it to. I’m constantly wondering when the effect of that is going to show up.” But it hasn’t had a significant impact thus far, which Nisbet credits partly to the fact that people who’d rather buy a cheaper, throw-away orchid aren’t really orchid boarding-type clients anyway.
More challenging than competition has been environmental factors that affect a lot of businesses—particularly in the agricultural industry—such as prices for water, gas and labor.
“My water bill just tripled here in Bolinas,” says Nisbet. “And we heat with propane, which has gone way up with the gas prices. As water and energy get to be more precious, things get more complicated. We have to constantly try to figure out how to be more efficient.”
Do it yourself
For those not in the business of orchids, but who’d like to go a step above buying one at Trader Joe’s only to subsequently and inadvertently kill it after a few months, Vence Brown suggests attending an Orchid Society meeting (there’s one in every North Bay County, and affiliated societies of the American Orchid Society can be found at http://orchidweb.org/aos).
“If you want to get more involved in [orchid growing], the best thing is to go to the Orchid Society meetings and see what’s going on,” says Brown. “Or, find a grower. If someone walks in and starts asking questions, growers won’t hesitate to stop whatever they’re doing and answer their questions to get people off to the right start. They won’t just throw a plant at you.”
Steve Podesta, whose next floral show (at Macy’s in Chicago in March 2008) is called “South America to Chicago,” was inspired by his recent travels to Brazil and Argentina, where he explored orchid inhabited rain forests. He suggests buying several different types of orchids when creating an orchid plant arrangement, so you can always have something blooming.
“It’s not the prettiest plant when it’s not in bloom. In most cases, it’s just a pot with a stem or two and a couple of leaves hanging out of it,” says Podesta. “That’s why, if you’re going to use them in a floral arrangement, you should get a larger tray or container space, where you can mix the foliages of the different types of orchids being used. They can all be mixed in together and, that way, they’ll look more interesting when they’re not in bloom. One of the nice things about this is, when one of them comes back into bloom, you can pull it from the tray and use it wherever you have a nice lit spot where you want to showcase them. By displaying the different textures and colors from the different orchid plants together, it makes them more interesting. You can create a really nice arrangement that way.”
Whether you want just a single orchid to add some elegance to your dinner table or give as a gift, or you’d like something more bold, exotic and unique, most orchid growers agree that one should buy orchids that fit not only with the growing conditions of your home or office, but also fit with the space you have available. If you want something that doesn’t need a lot of attention beyond a once-a-week watering, then get an orchid that fits that profile. Likewise, if you want to build it into a hobby and go all out with special fertilizer, humidity trays and light meters, the North Bay’s orchid growers will be more than happy to accommodate you and offer you advice and assistance.
