Ever wonder how to attract butterflies to your garden, or unravel the mysteries of growing herbs?
Can you tell the difference between a cattleya, oncidium or phalaenopsis?
Hang out with members of the Orange Blossom Garden Club of Lutz for a day, and you’ll learn all those things and more.
The club, whose history dates back to 1941, has 24 members who collectively know all sorts of interesting things about flowers and plants, gardens and pests, rooting, trimming, grafting and growing.
They learned recently at one of their monthly meetings about a smartphone app that helps identify plants. But, then, they already have Harriet Vaughan or Sara Rametta for that.
“Someone in our group always knows what a plant is,” says Lee Ann Brown, club president, while driving members to Everlast Orchids & Supplies in Spring Hill for a club field trip. Along the way, she explains how much members learn from each other and from speakers at their monthly meetings.
At State Road 52 and U.S. 41, she abruptly interrupts herself: “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe they’re taking down all those trees,” she says, wearily.
That’s a theme repeated by others on the outing. Some members – most past 60 – grew up in Florida and remember when the state was much less developed. Some even fought the widening of U.S. 41, the very road they were traveling on, on the way to Spring Hill.
Club members are drawn to a variety of plants and flowers.
Brown — who taught theater to high school students, some of whom made it to Broadway — rescues all sorts of plants from estate sales for a couple of dollars each and coaxes them back to beauty.
“Usually, they just need a little attention,” she says.
Former city planner Barbara Leiby says she learned about begonias at a club meeting and now grows her own.
Another member, Eva Balogh, says, “I can’t limit myself, so I grow everything.” Her friend, Darwin Brew, takes the opposite approach. He has 600 orchids and couldn’t resist buying more at Everlast.
He meticulously labels them and spends days bringing them in from the cold. But, he doesn’t seem to mind.
“It’s fun,’’ he says.
His first orchid was a pink phalaenopsis.
“It was 10 bucks, so I bought it, brought it home and put it on a table, and it bloomed and bloomed and bloomed.”
He was captivated.
At Everlast, he helped Eva Balogh decide between a delicate white cattleya hybrid or a yellow one, both with a splash of purple-pink.
“This one has more buds,’’ he tells her, as she spots yet a third choice.
“And, look at that one,” she says, pointing to another prize winner.
There are just so many to choose from.
Hong-Chia Lee and his wife, Andrea Macias, who own Everlast, have 200,000 orchids in greenhouses spanning an acre off U.S. 41 in Spring Hill.
They sell to the public, as well as to florists, garden shops, and to brokers who sell to Lowe’s and other chain stores.
Lee offers growing tips, as he leads 16 garden club members on a tour of his greenhouses.
“Most people do too much to orchids,” he tells the members.
“Just like your husbands, just leave them alone. We like to be left alone,’’ he said, laughing. “They’d rather be dry than wet. Water them every 8 to 10 days. Not every day.”
Since most of his orchids come from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Thailand and other warm places, they like the heat. One of the best places for them in the winter, he says, is a warm and humid bathroom.
He spends $30,000 on propane to keep his stock warm every winter, but then, he orders 9,000 plants and 1,200 bags of moss at a time, and 18-wheeler trucks deliver his fertilizer.
Asked how many orchids he has at home, he smiles and says, “Zero.’’
Of course, he doesn’t have to go far to see them.
He and his wife, and his 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, live in a house on their 9-acre nursery property, so, “If I want to see an orchid, I just come here,” he says.
Some garden club members have been to his nursery before and he donates orchids to their annual plant sale, whose proceeds fund a yearly $500 scholarship to a high school senior planning to concentrate on agriculture of some sort.
This year’s sale is March 7 from 9 a.m. to noon, at County Line Produce, at County Line Road and U.S. 41 in Lutz.
Club members also collect canned goods for a food bank and donate throws, socks and other items to a nursing home.
At lunch after their nursery tour, they talk about herbs and coffee plants (they both like shade); bromeliads (The University of South Florida’s Botanical Gardens has pretty ones); bleeding hearts (they’re wonderful, but have to be thinned sometimes); camellias (lovelier than roses); orchids (addictive); deer (bad) and snakes (good).
Their conversations have that good friends’ easy feeling, with no mention of politics, religion, sports or the state of our union.
But, then, that’s what garden clubs are for — friendship, learning and swapping stories about flowers, gardens and other natural wonders.
Garden Club
The Orange Blossom Garden Club of Lutz meets at 10 a.m., on the first Wednesday of the month, from September through June, in the Lutz Civic Center, 98 First Ave., N.W., in Lutz. (December’s meeting is a holiday luncheon and June’s is a scholarship luncheon). For more details, call (813) 949-1301.
Orchid shop
Everlast Orchids & Supplies is at 17019 U.S. 41, Spring Hill. Open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Call (727) 235-1386, or visit www.EverlastOrchids.com.
By Karen Haymon-Long
Published February 19, 2020
