Chris Ibbotson tends to her cattleya orchids in preparation for this year's Autumn Festival of Orchids. From a single plant bought 16 years ago, her collection now fills seven glasshouses built by her husband Lindsay. Photo: Wilma Seymour
The Goulburn Valley Orchid Club will be hosting its autumn orchid show at the Kialla Paceway on May 20 and 21.
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The club’s Autumn Festival of Orchids will feature exhibitions from more than 20 of its members as well as from two Melbourne commercial growers.
President Chris Ibbotson said autumn was typically the season for only certain varieties of orchids to flower.
Displays or orchids from last year’s show.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
“There is the odd cymbidium in flower at this time, but mainly you’ll get to see some vandas, phalaenopsis and oncidiums,” Chris said.
“Your native orchids also flower mainly at this time of year.”
The show will have plants for sale and will feature seasoned growers to give advice.
“We will have experts re-potting plants and we will play to the crowd sizes to do the talks.”
The path to club president has not been without imagination or adventure for Chris and husband Lindsay.
She found time recently to reflect on the unique growth of her relatively new collection.
“I have only been growing them for 16 years from when I went to a market in Mooroopna and bought a beautiful cattleya,” Chris said.
“And then at a show three months later I bought another one, so Lindsay then built me a small glasshouse, so I felt I just had to fill it.
“And he made it bigger and bigger, and I just had to keep filling it more.
“The problem is that once you’ve got the bug, you just keep going.”
Lindsay made the dome glasshouse from recycled trampolines and then developed it further to feature an automated roof-opening.
“He took the motor out of my mother’s electric lift chair to allow the dome to lift off.
“He’s very resourceful with recycling; we call it the tramp house because of all the trampolines used to make it and because I spend time in there, people say ‘that’s not a very nice name’!”
The couple now has seven glasshouses in which the flourishing collection thrives.
The innovation has not come without misadventure while experimenting with winter heating systems.
“The first one caught alight one night from a leak in a gas pipe which lost us a quarter of the collection,” Chris said.
“So Lindsay put the fire out and then of course all the orchid growers said that the rest of the plants were finished from smoke damage to their leaves.
“But, Lindsay decided he wasn’t having that and felt so guilty that he spent the next three weeks washing all the leaves with lemon juice and so rescued most of them.”
The couple then installed a heating system designed from a pipe laid two-and-a-half metres underground, which uses the warmth of deep soil to keep cattleya orchids flowering through winter.
“We got the idea from England.
“The big cattleya orchids require a certain amount of heat in the winter, they just won’t take a week of minus five degrees.
“But bottled gas is so dear, so you don’t want to be heating glasshouses that way – or setting them on fire again!”
The Autumn Festival of Orchids will be held at the Kialla Paceway, 7580 Goulburn Valley Hwy, Kialla West.
Gates open at 9am on Saturday, May 20 and 10am on Sunday, May 21.
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