ourish in holes and
corners where no experienced gardener would put them, and they flatly
refuse to live under all the conditions most approved by science. Most
persons who grow them have such adventures to tell, their own or reported.
Sir Trevor Lawrence mentioned at the Orchid Conference that he once built
a Phalaenopsis house at the cost of L600; after a few months' trial he
restored his plants to their old unsatisfactory quarters and turned this
beautiful building to another purpose. The authorities at Kew tell the
same story with rueful merriment. In both cases, the situation, the plan,
every detail, had been carefully and maturely weighed, with intimate
knowledge of the eccentricities to be dealt with and profound respect for
them. Upon the other hand, I could name a 'grower' of the highest standing
who used to keep his Phalaenopsis in a ramshackle old greenhouse belonging
to a rough market-gardener of the neighbourhood--perhaps does still. How
he came to learn that they would thrive there as if under a blessed spell
I have forgotten. But once I paid the market-gardener a visit and there,
with my own eyes, beheld them flourishing under conditions such that I do
not expect a plain statement of the facts to be believed. In the midst of
the rusty old ruin was a stand with walls of brick; above this wires had
been fixed along the roof. The big plants hung lowest. Upon the edges of
their baskets smaller plants were poised, and so they stood, one above
another, like a child's house of cards--I am afraid to say how high. A
labouring man stood first at one end, then at the other, and cheerfully
plied the syringe. They were not taken down nor touched from month to
month.

Seeing and hearing all this, I cried--but the reader can imagine what I
cried.

'Well,' replied the market-gardener, 'I don't understand your orchids. But
I shouldn't ha' thought they was looking poorly.'

Poorly! Under these remarkable circumstances some scores of Phalaenopsis
were thriving as I never saw them elsewhere.

In this house they do very well, growing and flowering freely, giving no
trouble by mysterious ailments. We have most of the large
species--amabilis, Stuartiana, Schilleriana, Sanderiana, etc. No
description of these is required. Hybrids of Phalaenopsis are few as yet.
Here is Hebe, the product of rosea x Sanderiana, rosy white of sepal and
petal, bright pink of lip, yellow at the base.

On the left is a 'rockery' of tufa, planted