Growing Orchids: Tips at a Glance
The exotic orchid has become a popular and affordable house plant in recent decades and our growing tips will help your tropical house plant thrive.
- Type Tropical plant
- Lifespan Perennial
- Growing Zones 13
- Light Filtered sun
- Moisture Prefers humidity
- Soil Bark, moss
- Design Tip Be patient
- Expert Advice Likes tight roots
- Peak Season March
Orchids: A Field Guide
After 19th-century Victorian plant collectors brought home orchids from tropical climes, the plants’ fickle natures turned them into the coddled specimens of flower fanciers and expensive indulgences for the wealthy.
But these days Orchidaceae has become a popular house plant, thanks to increased availability and affordability. (In the 1960s reliable new commercial propagation techniques enabled the mass production of clones via tissue culture. Today orchids are the most valuable floriculture crop produced in the United States and experts estimate the number of hybrids at 75,000 and growing.)
Don’t be nervous; your orchid can thrive indoors. See our tips for How to Keep an Orchid Alive and read about our correspondent’s obsession with her tropical house plant in The Orchid That Owned Me.