The Story of the Festival Phalaenopsis...

Here is an inside scoop on behind the scenes of the madness at Burnham Nurseries while we were prepping for our annual orchid festival.

 

Our story begins on a calm Thursday morning when we had a large number of flowering orchids delivered to us, 2 days before the Festival. We unpacked all the plants and got the shop set up and ready, looking great and full of a colourful array of freshly flowering orchids. 

 

However, to our surprise, upon arrival on Friday morning we noticed that a few of the varieties of Phalaenopsis were starting to show signs of heat damage - dropping their flowers and the buds were starting to look a little strange. We decided to separate the plants affected and keep an eye on them and the rest of the delivery.

 

This now takes us to Friday afternoon, staff were running around, prepping the final touches to get the nursery Festival ready. All the while, the flowering phalaenopsis were progressing further into their downfall while we were all busy and distracted.

 

Saturday morning arrived and the Festival was underway.

It had become very clear that the majority of the Phalaenopsis that were delivered on Thursday had all been affected by heat damage on the journey to us and were all dropping most if not all of their flowers & buds. It was a devastating thing to see with our busiest weekend of the year just starting.

 

We felt the best solution was to trim back the stems in a way that should encourage them to flower again soon and reduce their prices. The leaves are fine and unaffected, the flowers and buds are the most vulnerable part of the plant.

 

We didn’t let this ruin our weekend for us or our lovely customers. We were lucky to still manage to have enough healthy flowering orchids to fill the shop with a colourful display and despite all the troubles, we still managed to have a really successful and enjoyable weekend.