THE PHALAENOPSIS HOUSE 



Phalaenopsis are noted for whimsicality. They flourish 

 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 ;^6oo ; 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 



