These days we think nothing of having orchids as pot plants around the house. They’re piled high and sold cheap in every supermarket, having been grown by micropropagation in plant factories and then air-freighted in from all round the world. But this hasn’t always been the case, as I was reminded by a recent Gardens Trust on-line lecture by Toby Musgrave about the excesses of wealthy Victorian garden owners.
This obviously included a lot about orchidmania with the mention of a nurseryman who specialised in growing orchids on a large scale – Benjamin Samuel Williams – whose nursery was in Holloway in north London.
Since that’s where I live I had to know more…
Do a quick google search on traditional flowers for Easter and you’ll find what comes up are lots of florists websites telling you about the “Easter Lily” and while other flowers such as daffodils and tulips are suggested too it’s lilies that seem to predominate. So I thought I’d investigate further and discover the story of the “Easter Lily”, the florist’s name for what botanists call Lilium longiflorum, and the market traders in London’s Columbia Road Flower Market shout out more simply as ” Lonjee lilies”
One of my favourite garden writers is Beverley Nichols, and the other day I discovered this wonderful quote about him and his work: If Bertie Wooster and Gertrude Jekyll had a son, surely he would have been Beverley Nichols. Today’s post is proof of that.
The Garden History Blog 
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