ORCHIDS 103 



when their work was over, that my table was the 

 most beautiful they had ever judged, and gave them 

 no anxiety. 



The method of arrangement which I adopted 

 was a very simple one, the only accessories being a 

 few bundles of moss and a two-foot stick painted 

 olive-green and a saucer. 



For the centre-piece I made a fairly solid flat 

 pad of moss on the saucer and fixed the stick firmly 

 in the middle of it ; next I secured a small ball of 

 moss on the top, and after lightly covering top and 

 bottom with sprays of Asparagus Sprengerii and 

 twining a long piece of the same up the stick, I 

 sharpened the stems of the Orchids and pushed 

 them into the moss in a perfectly natural way. 

 Four more small pads of moss treated on the same 

 lines and four tiny specimen glasses arranged a 

 little higher, and the whole placed on the table 

 en zigzag and the result was as near perfect as 

 such things can be. 



Each morning the moss was damped and so the 

 flowers were as crisp and fresh-looking when the 

 show closed as they were when it opened. 



In the list of useful varieties to grow for 

 decorating and cutting, the enormous number of 

 1500 varieties which one finds in Orchid catalogues 



