Product Description

Wherever you live in the world, you can grow orchids in your garden. From lady's slippers in boreal forests to dendrobiums hanging from tropical palms, orchids provide color and elegance unmatched by any other garden flower. Although it may sound too good to be true, many orchids are actually low-maintenance plants for various backyard habitats — and don't need special pots or greenhouses. In this exciting book, Robert Friend shows gardeners how to introduce orchids into the garden by attaching them to trees, fixing them to rocks and walls, or planting them directly into garden beds. He details more than 500 orchid choices for every garden situation and supplies practical cultivation information. The author draws on a lifetime of experience with orchids to explain how to choose the right orchid for a given climate and how to landscape with orchids in different types of gardens from tropical to cool-climate areas, from large acreages to small courtyard gardens. Growing Orchids in Your Garden offers an array of dramatic ideas for every reader.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #684890 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 220 pages

Review
"A boon to all California gardeners that wonder what to do with orchids once all the windows in the house are full."—John Bagnasco, Garden Compass, April 2005 (John Bagnasco Garden Compass )

"Recommended for any library serving gardeners or horticultural students and researchers."—Sarah Williams, E-Streams, September 2005 (Sarah Williams E-Streams )

"This beautifully illustrated guide by an Australian orchid expert explains how epiphytes can be grown on trees, lithophytes on rocks and walls, and terrestrials in the ground."—Library Journal, December 2, 2004 (Library Journal )

About the Author
Robert G. M. Friend's career in orchids began more than fifty years ago, when he was just ten years old. During that time, in addition to work as a lawyer, mediator, and tropical fruit orchardist, he has grown, studied, hybridized, photographed, imported, and exported orchids. He has professionally landscaped gardens with orchids, sold their cut flowers, and run a successful orchid nursery. He has traveled throughout the world visiting orchids in their natural habitats and in gardens during the research of this book. He and his wife, Lilinoe, live on the eastern coast of Australia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
One of the charms of growing orchids naturally in the garden is the plant shape many assume. Orchids in containers grow in a regular fashio, stems upright, the spreading types progressing horizontally across the surface of the container. When you attach epiphytic orchids to trees, they start to grow as they would in nature. Sometimes the types with stiff bulbs, like cattleyas, will march right along a branch, while the clumping types, like some maxillerias and oncidiums, will encircle a branch, looking for all the world like large green pincushions. Slender-stemmed types, like many dendrobiums and vandas, will stand with their growing tips curving upwards. Seeking the light. This natural growth habit imparts a graceful line to the plants never acheived in containers. The flowers of orchids grown in the natural way display themselves as nature intended. Many growers of orchids in containers stake flower stems erect, giving the flowering plant a stiff, unnatural look. The canes of spring-flowering softcane dendrobiums, for example, are usually staked upright, resembling soldiers at attention. Grown naturally on a tree at head height, the same plants produce graceful, slightly pendent growths with a curving line like an ancient eastern scimitar. In bloom, the flowers seem to smile and nod at the gardner–a far cry from the regimented ranks of container-grown orchids. Naturally grown orchids in the garden look cheerful and independent, taking full advantage of their surroundings. Their free forms and lovely blooms are alluring. They are more robust, growing subject to all the seasonal changed in light, temperature, and humidity just as they would be in their wild homes.

Customer Reviews

Growing Orchids in Your Garden
I purchased this book in response to a review in "Orchids" the journal of the American Orchid Society. That magazine reviewed another book, "Hardy Perennial Orchids," by Bill Mathis. In the review they noted that this book is much more comprehensive. That statement is true to a very narrow degree - it mentions more genera of orchids. This book for the most part considers the arrangement of tropical epiphytic orchids in tropical gardens or temporarily set outside during the summer. Thus, the information contained in it is contained in any general book about orchid culture. This book does contain an occasional paragraph, scattered here and there, about hardy terrestrial orchids that may be incorporated into gardens, but without any information about "how to do it." If the reader is relatively new to the keeping of tropical orchids, then "Growing Orchids in the Garden" is a fairly good introduction (to growing them in the house or setting them in the garden for the summer), although there are better general introductions. If the vast majority of US or European readers truly want to grow orchids in their gardens (and there are many that are both easy and magnificient in appearance) then a book like that by Mathis is what you are looking for. It gives detailed instructions, which this books does not cover at all.

The value of this book depends upon the location of your garden
The world of orchids can be divided into tropical, sub-tropical (usually below 30 degrees latitude), and temperate. This book is mostly about growing orchids outdoors in the tropical and subtropical areas of the United States, though some space is devoted to mostly frost free areas above 30 degrees. And just a small amount is devoted to the temperate regions.

So you might be disappointed if you are not located in Florida (especially south of Gainsville), Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or Southern California. But if your garden is in one of the subtropical areas you will be delighted. It is not a big book for the price, but is well written, nicely illustrated, and contains much practical advice. For example the author discusses which types of trees are best for which epiphytes, where to place them on the tree, how to attach them, how much optimal sunlight and so forth.

Good book, but not so valuable if you live in Minnesota.

DARING TO GROW OUTSIDE
With some helpfull hints to grow orchids outside the house, this book choose the right orchids species for the different types of gardens. Though not conclusive with this, it also emphasize the orchids culture on courtyard and balcony, even in indoor gardens. A choice for gardeners and garden designers. Superb photos and a notheworthy table of orchids selection. Alejandro Taborda, ARGENTINA.