PERSONAL INFORMATION
My name is Barry Gardner
and as long as I can remember I have been interested in some form of
Horticulture. I remember when I was very young I always had a very large
vegatable garden in my parents home, later I started a "Backyard
Nursery" in my teens and really enjoyed propagating all sorts of trees and
shrubs. When I married in my late twenties we bought our house and I built a
20ft by 10ft hothouse ( I still use it today as one of the five hot houses I
have for my Orchids) where I grew a lot of Tropical Indoor plants i.e.
Philodenrons, Begonias, Hoya, Ivy, etc. This lasted for a number of years and I
then became interested in breeding Cage Birds and found that I could not handle
both of them, I just didn't have the time to spare; I moved a lot of the
Tropical Plants into hanging baskets into the Patio and changed the "fibre
glass sheeting"on the roof over to iron sheeting and used it for my
"Breeding Room" for the Canaries that I bred and Exhibited for over
20 years.
In the
latter years of the Canaries I bought a few Orchids and a small hothouse that
was in kit form 10ft by 5ft ( still use this one as well today) these were
mostly Cattleya and a few Hardcane Dendrobiums, but I really hadn't caught the
"bug' at this stage.
In
1982 because of my interest in Cage Birds I had the opportunity to start my own
Bird and Seed Business, it grew over the years into a very large outlet and in
1994 my wife Pauline and I decided to sell out and retire.
By
this time, I had been "Collecting" lots of Orchids for about 10 years
and today I have 6 hothouses full to the brim, with a very large range of
Genera. I have run out of room in our backyard for more hothouses ( I have even
tried to kid my wife into removing the "rotary cloths hoist" so I
could fit in another one, but to no avail)
About two
years ago I decided that I would like to grow some orchids of my own, so I
started flasking using the simple ideas that Fred Bergman had written about (
see "Simple Orchid Flasking) I did this on
the kitchen Breakfast Bar and had great results. So the "seed was
sown", and I now turned my Son's bedroom ( he had since married and the
room was now empty) into my Lab.
By
this time, I was a member of The Species Society of Western Australia and after
being able to purchase a small plant ( plant of the month) at the meeting, I
could see that these small plants month after month were going to be hard to
find, so I decided I would make a donation by starting to flask as many Species
as I could for the Society; with the help of members who allowed me and other
committee members to pollinate their plants at the meeting ( sibling crosses
are better than selfing). At this time (june99) I have 230 different species in
flask. As the plants have grown to the top of the flasks we then farm them out
to members to de-flask and grow to 50ml tubes for the Society.
For
myself I flask Catasetinae hybrids and Species which I have quite a number now
and I keep pollinating every season to add to my collection; I have about 150
flowering size plants ( all different) growing and flowering each season.
Mine and Paulines other main item in our life is our wonderful Grand Children who we receive a lot of love and attention from, the eldest is Jon who is now 9yrs, Kelsey 6 yrs, Jason 5 yr and Hayley 18 months old. If you would like to see a photo of them CLICK HERE.
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'Barry's Orchid Page'. All rights reserved 1999/2006.