Blooming great weekend: Orchid show comes to town

250915PBOrchid1 Kath Bourne with her magnificent Dendrobium Speciosum. PICTURE / PAUL BROOKS

A weekend of colour, scent and extraordinary blooms is in store for orchid lovers this weekend.
Saturday and Sunday, from 10am to 4pm, at the City College School Hall in Ingestre St is the Wanganui Orchid Society's show, incorporating prize orchids from members of clubs from around the country and judges from out of town.
Kath Bourne is the local club president and she has been an orchid "collector" for many years.
"It's a disease," she says. Last weekend there was an orchid show in Palmerston North to which Kath and husband John would be going. "You can bet your bottom dollar I'll come back with something new."
Their home showcases orchids of many varieties - and a Galah called Rosie.
"These are some of my indoor ones," says Kath, "which need warmth, obviously, otherwise they'd be outside."
There's no argument; the blooms are beautiful.
"There are thousands of different varieties," says Kath. "And in each variety they are breeding or cross-breeding so new stuff is becoming available all the time."
Orchids come from all over the world so growing conditions vary across the species.
"They grow like weeds in Singapore - but that's a certain type because they like the heat and they get the humidity," says Kath. "But some like the cold. I have a shadehouse with what they call cool-growing orchids. Although you need to protect them from the frost, they don't need any other heat. What you would term the 'chocolate box' orchids, they're the ones that need the heat. You mention orchids and people immediately think Cymbidium, and they're a cool growing orchid."
The different varieties flower at different times and a lot of Kath's plants are coming into flower - some will be in bloom in time for this weekend's show; some will not.
"We just hope and pray the weather holds and that they'll do their thing at the right time," she says. "The one I really want to get to the show is in a wine barrel - we'll need half a dozen men to lift it - it's half in flower, half not, but because of the extreme weather we've had lately we've had it covered with a tarpaulin."
Surprisingly there is little real competition among members or between clubs.
"They're good people," says John.
"They're all very friendly," says Kath. "All the growers share their knowledge."
The club meets once a month on a Sunday afternoon during winter and in the evening during summer.
"In two years' time, 2017, it will be 50 years that the club has been running," says Kath, "So I feel we should do something special."
Entry to the show this weekend is $2 and plants are available to buy.