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Some of our members had a great weekend visit to The Eric Young Foundation in Jersey.

We were made welcome to the Eric Young Orchid Foundation by the curator Chris Purver. First he took us to the library which houses a treasury of rare orchid books, paintings and slides.He showed us medals from around the world given for the displays they put on. Chris also let us see the famous and very rare ‘Orchidacea of Mexico and Guatemala’ by James Bateman. This book of around 120 pages is huge ( 3’ x 2’ ) and has a life size painting of an orchid and description of the plant on each page. In the past copies of the book have been bought at auction and individual pages sold off at £1500 to £2000 each.

After nearly an hour in the library – which flew by, it really was that interesting – we were taken to the growing houses, which like the library are off limits to the public.

They have the best of everything at Eric Young’s and his legacy allows the foundation to create and show hybridised orchids free from commercial constraints. The growing houses are very modern, built in 2000, and have cool growing plants on the outside and intermediate to warm inside to conserve heat. The first cool house we entered was a rainbow of cymbidiums, nearly half of them in flower. The quality of the blooms was astounding and a fair few were fragrant. Next we were shown the paphiopedilums – they were stunning – nearly every label was an FCC. How do they get that lucky? On to the phragmipediums – they were not bad either. Then the miltonias and oncidiums, Chris Purvers favourites. He showed us some huge flowers bred at the foundation and yes they had a wonderful scent.

Three hours had gone by and reluctantly we allowed Chris to go for his lunch. What a super fellow he is and a wealth of gladly shared knowledge.

After a quick cuppa we looked around the Display House where the public go and were amazed at the quality and variety of the plants on show, in groups of 10 or 20.

All this coupled with sunshine and good company made this a memorable trip. Thanks Kerstin for organising it.

Kenneth Johnson, May 2011