About orchids

A small suburban garden gives Frederick Boyle the starting point for these conversational essays on orchids. Writing as an enthusiastic amateur, he describes reshaping a cramped, shaded plot and raising beds to reduce the need for stooping. His purpose is to show that orchid growing can be within reach of people with modest means. The chapters move from his own gardening and an orchid sale to plants suited to cool, warm and hot conditions, then to an orchid farm and hybridizing.

Boyle combines close attention to flowers with accounts of the people who collect and cultivate them. One passage describes pollen released when a flower is touched; another considers ants living inside hollow orchid bulbs. He also offers practical observations on warmth, sunlight and watering for Dendrobiums. The appeal today lies in this mixture of personal experience, botanical curiosity and a late nineteenth-century grower's view of an absorbing pastime.