Spiral pathway constructed around the Supertrees

Gardens by the Bay is the largest garden project in Singapore with funding of more than SGD$1 billion. Marked from far by the 18 iconic supertrees and two climate controlled conservatories, the Gardens consist of different themed Gardens congregated together along the waterfront of Marina Bay. The Gardens was open for previewing during the 20th World Orchid Conference.

Supertree trunk

The 18 man-made supertrees were specially designed to mimic functions of natural trees for absorption of solar energy, rainwater as well as for gaseous exchange. Supertrees fitted with photo-voltaic cells soak up and convert solar energy to electrical energy for various purposes like lighting. Rainwater collected by the supertrees are channeled to irrigation units and fountains within the Gardens for self sustenance. The supertrees also serves to provide shade for the Gardens and are paired with the conservatories for gaseous exchanges.

Mediterranean Flower Dome

There are two climate controlled conservatories of which the Flower dome was open for preview during the 20th WOC. The Flower Dome consist of a cool and dry Mediterranean climate while the Cloud Forest consisted of a cool and wet climate to simulate mountain top climate, both which are built with environmentally sustainable technologies.

The Gardens by the Bay is currently closed for further enhancement, if you’ve missed visiting the Garden by the Bay this year due to your busy schedule, do not fret, the Gardens by the Bay will be open again next June 2012. For more information on Gardens by the Bay, kindly visit their website here.

Orchid Show - Thailand's Display

This year’s WOC was a great experiential exchange between growers, traders and hobbyists alike from different countries, with many catering their wares and merchandises in the marketplace.

The award winning orchid displays were magnificent! (e.g. For the display from Thailand, there’s a waterfall created in the midst of driftwood beautifully carved by nature and filled with many types of orchids).

Orchid Show - Papua New Guinea's Display

The floral arrangements competition by school children were also very impressive. The arrangement that won the first in that category, made up of various musical clefs and notes particularly caught my eye. The child who came up with that design is definitely talented but alas we didn’t manage to capture a picture of that arrangement.

We would like to thank everyone who’ve traveled to Singapore and visited our local commercial nursery, its been our pleasure to meet up and exchange knowledge with you. It was particularly interesting to learn especially from orchid growers who came from afar. =)

This entry was backdated.

Visitors who purchase tickets for WOC at the orchid glass house stands to participate in a lucky draw to win more prizes. The display will end on the 28th Oct 2011.

Below are some pictures preparatory work in our nursery and the actual installation @ Raffles Place taken both at night and during the day.

The Orchid Garden Glass House was made possible with the support of various partners including The Shelter Company represented by The Gorillas Inc., Candy Floriculture, Mill Sterling and coordination by the National Parks Board. Visitors to the Orchid Garden Glass House will also stand a chance to win prizes sponsored by Guerlain and The Singapore Shawl Pte Ltd.

An updated  “Orchid care” section, with a new look and new content.

Growing Dendrobium Orchids

Growing Vandaceous Orchids

Managing Orchid Pathogens

Fertilizer Applications for Orchids

Assorted Fragrant Cattleyas

Assorted fragrant Cattleyas in flower and going at a special price this Hari Raya Puasa festive:

- 4.5 inch hanging pots - Regular Price: SGD$25.00
Now: SGD$20.00! 

- 3.5 inch pots and below - Regular Price: SGD$20.00
Now SGD$16.00! 

Discount Coupon: HRP2011

Offer valid till 31st August 2011

We welcome teachers/enrichment groups who are interested in holding biological classes related to orchids in our nursery, kindly contact us prior if you are coming down in a group and we’ll provide you a group quote based on your group’s activity.

We highly recommend that you seek out instructors/guides from Spider Orchid who have a rich knowledge of Singapore’s orchid history. Courses by instructors will be segregated into various level of difficulties based on your student group and programmes can be held in a good number of languages are possible as there are guides who can translate languages (e.g. Chinese etc).

For more information and enrichment programmes, kindly contact http://spiderorchid.com.sg/.

Dendrobium Orchids produced for sale

Singapore will be hosting the 20th World Orchid Conference from the 13th to 20th November 2011. Singapore is hosting this event for the second time, with the first happening in October, 1963, almost 5 decades ago. The conference will be taking place at Marina Bay Sands, the newly built integrated resort added to Singapore’s entertainment sector early this year.

Mokara Singa Gold produced in a row

Dendrobium Aridang Blue in a row

For those who are interested in visiting our booth, our booth D112 is situated close to the organizer’s booth as well as the exit.

For oversea visitors/ growers/ breeders who are interested in visiting our nursery to learn more about how commercial cut orchids/plants are produced in Singapore, kindly contact us early before the show (before 31st Oct 2011)  so that we can make arrangements to bring you around our nursery.

With the WOC being hosted in Singapore this year, we took the opportunity to introduce a little on Singapore’s national flower the Vanda Miss Joaquim, an orchid, her legacy as well as new products that are starting to flower in our nursery and yet to be added to our online shop.

For those who are not in our mailing list, you may download our March 2011 newsletter here.

Also, if you are tropical orchid nursery grower coming to Singapore for this 20th WOC, kindly contact us if you have products that you would like to offer to us. We are interested in lowland, tropical orchids and will purchase some suitable flasks or plants from you during your visit this November.

Since its inception, Mandai Orchid Garden has always been a specialist in the hybridization of Vandaceous orchids and thus many large, colourful and homegrown Vanda hybrids can be found here. A good number of  the hybrids they grow are also named after influential historical characters such as David Marshall, Chief Minister of Singapore (1955) and Tan Hoon Siang, descendant of Tan Tock Seng and founder of his hospital.

Coming this new year 2011, the garden will be shutdown for the expansion of the zoo, thus putting to an end to its 60 years operation. In an effort to preserve hybrids produced by this heritage garden, TG bought over a good number of the Garden’s hybrids with plans for further development of selective hybrids.

Attached below are some hybrids from Mandai Orchid Garden.

*This entry was backdated.
**Photos courtesy of Hedrick Kwan, ex-Curator of Mandai Orchid Garden.

Orchid Giftboxes (Retail Price: SGD$28)

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Our new range of orchid giftboxes, ideal as personal or corporate gifts, are available for order today.  Freshly harvested orchids from our nursery in Singapore are packed and distributed daily islandwide. These giftboxes may comprises of different orchid varieties or single variety where preferred.

Our giftbox is specially designed with six floral whorl at the top representing the 5 petals and 1 sepal, a distinctive characteristic of an orchid flower. The back of the giftbox is imprinted with pictures of different varieties of orchids for easy recognition and provides some educative information to tourists who are unfamiliar with them. A woolen handle is attached for easy carrying. Tourist may also use the QR barcode to access our web interface conveniently with their 3G mobile for more information.

As part of our effort to promote Singapore’s orchids overseas, we offer very attractive sales packages for individuals, souvenir shops, cafe and hotels that cater specifically to tourist for promotion of our giftboxes. This includes travel agencies/independent tour guides/business entities that resides locally in Singapore. Interested parties may register here with us. Conditions apply.

For corporate orders, please contact us for corporate rates on bulk purchases.

Keikis are young orchid plantlets, usually produced from old plant stock with low yield, to be used as new seedling stock for the next generation of nursery plants. Keikis retains similar genetics makeup from the parent plant and are more stable than mericlone in terms of genetics stability for the next generation of stock plants. Producing keikis from old orchid plants is a very simple process. In this entry, we will describe and share the methods we use for producing keikis for two varieties of orchids, namely the Dendrobium and Mokara.

For Dendrobium, select old mature parent plants with low flowering yields. For best results, choose those with thick, turgid and succulent stems and exclude the rest with skimpy stems.

To be neater, the parent plant may be separated into individual stems as shown above, or left as a whole as shown below. Remove their leaves and trim the stem down to manageable size. Treat the stems with fungicide, particularly to areas which were trimmed and have open wounds, before drying the plants out in the sun.

After drying, lay the stems in neat rows, under 50% shade, as shown in the pictures below. Keep watering to minimum and apply fungicide regularly. The main objective here is to induce stress and shock to the parent plants so that they produce more keikis.

Keikis should start growing off primarily at the terminal end of stems within two months. Growth from nodes on stems may also be observed but in lesser quantity.

Towards the second month, fertilizers may be applied when new root growth from the keikis are observed. Keikis should be ready for transplanting within two to three months after the hardening process.

To transplant the keikis, use a clean shear and snipe off the attached keikis off the old parent stem. Note that the bulb of the new plantlet should not be damaged in the process.

Transplant the detached keiki in fresh charcoal and with care, it will eventually grow into a new orchid plant similar to its parent plant.

The method for producing keikis from Mokara is different from that of Dendrobiums. This similar method applies for most tropical Vandaceous plants which includes plants like the Aranda, Ascocenda, Aranthera and so on.

To produce keikis from the Mokara, start by performing a top cut by cutting the entire parent plant in half (usually the top portion will be about 2/3 of the parent plant and the bottom will be about 1/3 of the parent plant, for shorter plants, they are cut into 1/2 for top and 1/2 bottom), thus removing the apical bud/meristem/shoot from the parent plant.

Treat the two portions with fungicide, particularly to the open wounds region. The top cut portion of the parent plant can be immediately replanted as a new plant. The remaining stump of the plant can then be used for inducing keikis.

Unlike the Dendrobiums, fertilization program for the stump portion of the Mokara should still continue as per norm. Setup the parent stump in 50% shade and keikis will grow from the axillary buds/nodes, which are usually found at the joints of the remaining leaves and stem, as shown in the picture on the right.

Theoretically, all the remaining nodes are capable of producing one keiki each, thus when the keiki hardens and produces root, it will be good to snipe them off if you would like more keikis to be produced. This would relieve the parent stump of its load and new keikis may be produced if there are still nodes remaining. This process will be good for about 6 months, after of which the keikis production will retard after the parent stump has drained most of it resources.

The keikis produced will gradually grow into plants similar to the parent plant.

Keikis from cutted Mokara

To illustrate, the following are examples of the Dendrobium Shavin White and two variations:

The typical Dendrobium Shavin White flower is greenish-white when it blooms initially. The greenish colouration fades resulting in a more whitish colour, as the flower fully blossoms.

In variation 1, pink flushes are observed along the petals and sepals, with a strong pigmentation of pink along the centre of the lip.

In variation 2, the reddish-pink colouration can be observed spreading from within the column.

Cloning the above variations could produce batches of atypical looking Dendrobium Shavin Whites. However, if the variations arose from unstable mutations, there’s a higher chance that their clones may end up being typical rather than atypical based on our experience.

The Dendrobium Shavin White cut-flowers have been circulating in the market for almost three decades. The Dendrobium Shavin White’s sustainability over the years is attributed to its well-aligned blooms, lasting flowers and strong flower stalks; and also being frequent flowering and maturing quickly. Notwithstanding, favourable genes from its pedigree should be credited. The Dendrobium Shavin White is a cross between the Dendrobium Walter Oumae and Dendrobium Queen Florist. In particular, the Dendrobium Walter Oumae has favourable characteristics and is used extensively for crossing. (It is the parent of more than 50 registered orchid hybrids).

Notably, both parents of the Dendrobium Shavin White are prominently white in colour, so it’s peculiar to find pinkish or reddish colourations. Bearing that in mind, reddish colours could already be embedded within its recessive genes; and only by chance will they be revealed. The following picture and magnification shows the typical (greenish-white) Dendrobium Shavin White, but a slight tinge of pink can be observed along the pedicel (“branch” attaching the flower to the stem). Due to its ancestry or hidden recessive genes, the Dendrobium Shavin White have the mutative propensity to reveal the reddish colour. Through self-pollination, typically hidden characteristics are uncovered and amplified.