By Cam Lucadou-Wells
MURRAY Harding calls his 10,000-orchid backyard nursery an obsession, even a disease.
The Berwick Orchid Club president will display some of his many wildly-flowering speciosums at the club’s Spring show on 24 and 25 September.
Among about 400 orchids at the show, the speciosum is Australia’s largest dendrobium orchid at about 1.5 metres tall. It grows on Australia’s east coast on rocks and trees.
“I grow a whole lot of stuff but that’s the eye-catcher,” Mr Harding said.
“At the show there will be other amazing different forms of orchids that people wouldn’t imagine are orchids.
“There are some absolute monsters, others that you need a magnifying glass to see.”
Mr Harding’s obsession started when he first looked after his father’s speciosum orchids.
“I was never interested in orchids when he grew them. When he retired, he left them and asked me to look after them.
“What are you going to do? Kill your father’s orchids?
“It was all downhill from there. Now I have grown 10 times more than he ever had.”
The plants – in number and variety – have flourished under a shadecloth that has consumed much of Mr Harding’s Devon Meadows backyard.
One of his plants is more than 30 years old. It started flowering 12 years after his father tended to the seedling, and is lodged in a gum tree in the driveway.
“They grow forever,” Mr Harding said.
However, there is a common allure to orchids. Open a display at a shopping centre and you discover “everyone has an orchid story”, Mr Harding says.
Fortunately for orchid spotters, this spring has been a bumper one due to the mild winter and long, mild summer, he says.
“The effect is that every flower thinks it’s time to put out all stops.”
The club’s orchid show features a large range of Australian and exotic orchids on display and sale, as well as growing accessories, demos and advice.
It is at Berwick Senior Citizens Hall, 112 High Street, Berwick on 24 and 25 September, 9am-4pm.
