HAVE had many horticultural enthusiasms, but I have never really caught the orchid bug. Better gardeners than me—rather more passionate plantsmen—have orchid houses with graded temperature zones for the different species: cool-ish is fine for cymbidiums, slightly warmer for phalaenopsis and steamy tropical heat for vanilla orchids. I’ve seen them, too, in Mediterranean gardens—Carolyn Hanbury has vast clumps of dendrobiums in pots at La Mortola, Italy—and in tropical gardens (oh, the dark-blue vandas in Singapore!), but, somehow, they never really engender any great fondness, let alone love or passion, in my temperate soul. That’s fine—one
