One group of plants that your grandmother probably would not have considered growing is orchids.

They have had a very reputation for being expensive and very difficult to grow. This reputation was earned in part by a craze in Victorian England for orchids. They were sold at auction for huge amounts of money. People thought they would make their fortunes by raising and selling prime plants. In those days, there was very little known about the growth requirements of the orchids.

People knew that some lived in hot and humid climates (and assumed that it meant all) so they attempted to replicate hot and humid climates by building stove houses. These variations of a greenhouse were made of heavily painted glass and heated by coal stoves with complex arrangements of brick flues that became very hot. The brick flues were continually drenched with water to make steam. There was no ventilation. Many plants probably succumbed to the air pollution from the stoves. There also didn't seem to be too much recognition that things were too hot or that in the tropics it cools off at night. Most of these very expensive orchids died and many fortunes were lost.

You can see the bad reputation continued in the “Nero Wolfe” mystery novels. The detective is so smart and rich that he can solve only the crimes he's interested in without ever leaving his chair and he grows orchids!

Don't despair.

Many orchids are easy to grow and aren't expensive. Easy varieties come from the Dendrobium, Vanda, Cymbidium and Phalaenosis families.

- Correspondent Cathy Denton