Feel the Flower Power! Go Inside the Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden

By Sharon Clott Kanter
Updated: May 21, 2015 @ 2:17 pm
Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

Snow is falling on New York City right now, but inside the New York Botanical Garden Victorian-style Conservatory, you’d never know it. That’s thanks to the 13th Annual Orchid Exhibition, The Orchid Show: Chandeliers, which features two rooms filled with thousands of orchids in bloom. Team InStyle went up to the Bronx to check out the garden of dreams before the show opened last week. The scent: Absolutely dreamy. The sight: A vision. The temperature: Hot, hot, hot (you’re in a glasshouse, after all, which frankly with the recent icy NYC temps was heavenly!)

After walking through the exhibition, we caught up with Marc Hachadourian, Director of Nolen Greenhouses, who explained that the appeal of this flower is its worldwide recognition: There are 30,000 naturally occurring species and over 150,000 manmade hybrids. “Orchids have had this long-standing tradition as always being associated with the exotic, the wild, and the unusual,” he told us. “The rose may be the symbol of love, but the orchid is considered the symbol of exotic passion.”

The exhibition opened last week in New York, and will run through April 19th. Visit nybg.org for tickets and to learn more. Not in town? Click through the gallery to see some of the gorgeous floral highlights.

PHOTOS: The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

The show took two weeks to put together but months of cultivating to make sure the buds bloomed at the same time, said Marc Hachadourian, Director of Nolen Greenhouses for the New York Botanical Garden. 

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

Orchids are found all over the world and in all different cultures, from Japanese to Chinese to Greek. 

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

Senior Editor Sharon Clott Kanter stands under the massive star-shaped orchid chandelier, the centerpiece of the exhibition, created by Francisca Coelho. It measures 16 feet in diameter. “The inspiration for this chandelier was orchids floating in space,” explained Hachadourian.

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

“There are a little bit of horticultural acrobatics to get these gorgeous orchids, hundreds of them, on this enormous orchid chandelier,” said Hachadourian.

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

The orchid’s pollination habits—they only specialized reproductive parts and only one pollen mass/one chance at “procreation”—fascinate researchers. “There are orchids that do such bizarre things as mimic the female of a species of bee and trick the males into mating with the flowers to get them to pollinate them,” said Hachadourian. “It’s like they push the edge of science, almost to science fiction.”

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

Orchids are unlike any other plant. “There are orchids that attach themselves to tree branches,” said Hachadourian. “The idea that an orchid is so difficult and delicate, but really can hang off the branches in the tropics and bloom makes them seem like they’re extreme plants.”

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

This is one of the hanging orchid arrangements that gives the exhibition its Chandeliers name. 

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

This is the Cymbidium, otherwise called Golden Boy.

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

Orchids are the largest family of flowering plants.  Some range from 1/16 of an inch and can grow to more than 25 feet tall. 

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

Each orchid is staked to make sure it grows tall and straight. This usually happens after the orchid reaches one foot in length.

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

There’s a reason orchids are so expensive, explained Hachadourian. “An orchid can take on average three to four years from seed to bloom. There’s a lot of time and effort to get that plant up to the size needed.”

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The Orchid Show: Chandeliers at the New York Botanical Garden

Sarah Balch for InStyle.com

Caring for an orchid? Don’t baby it. “Orchids really thrive on benign neglect,” said Hachadourian. “Most people kill their orchids by doting over them too much, and they usually wind up over watering them and giving them too sun.”  

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