Probably the most distinguished nurseryman of the Victorian era was Frederick Sander, the man they called the Orchid King. His huge nursery was one of the largest in Britain, and he boasted of having orchid collectors in every corner of the world.

The finest varieties of those plants that remained were sold at auction at hugely inflated prices, where competition among the wealthy collectors was fierce. In this way, the first of the prodigious collections of orchids were created; their equal has never been seen since. The lust for tropical orchids spread beyond Europe to the East Coast of the United States, and by the turn of the 20th century orchids were being grown on both sides of the Atlantic.

In London, the Royal Horticultural Society appointed an Orchid Committee to set the standards for judging and awarding the best clones, and Britain maintained its lead in the introduction of new species. Early Orchid Nurseries The earliest nursery to specialize in tropical epiphytes and other exotic plants was that of Conrad Loddiges. He set up his nursery in the Hackney district of London. By 1812, he had established the largest collection of tropical plants known at that time. He published a journal, The Cabinet, in which he described many of the new plants. Other nurserymen followed, and the firm of B. S. Williams and Sons in Upper Norwood, London, and William Bull in the King’s Road, Chelsea, London, were at the forefront of supplying orchids to owners of large estates.

He made gestures of friendship and was allowed to land. He exchanged gifts in return for being shown where the red Phalaenopsis grew, and later left the island laden with a valuable cargo.

Started by Frederick Sander, this company Nourished through three generations of Ise same family before finally closing .icw.cn in 1962. In its heyday, the nursery employed over 100 men, whose main activity was to unpack the stream of boses that arrived almost daily and to sort out and pot up the new species. nursery opened a branch in Bruges, Belgium, and later in New York.

A few orchid nurseries that had beginnings in the 19th century are still flourishing today. These include Beans Orchids of Cooksbridge, Sussex, which was started in 1879 by a Scotsman, Alexander McBean. Mansell and Hatcher’s nursery in Leeds, Yorkshire, commenced in the 1890s, and in France, Vacherot and Lecoufle have been in existence since 1886, making theirs the oldest family-run nursery in the world.

Vanilla is still much in use today as a flavouring, but, while the seed capsules, called pods (beans), are in steady demand, artificial vanilla essence has lessened the need to cultivate plants. Today, the main vanilla crops come from Madagascar.

The botanical gardens employed botanists and taxonomists to classify and name the new discoveries. The upper classes of Britain and Europe were the patrons and they were willing to pay the huge sums often asked for the latest orchid sensation. In the size and number of their greenhouses, some of these private collections rivalled the nurseries who supplied them.