"nurseries foster orchids... White Oak Orchids in Pacifica...
Just as parents pay nannies to take care of their children and pet owners shell out bucks to send their animals to day care, customers of White Oak Orchids and California Orchids... pay to board their orchid collections. The service is a life-sustaining convenience for busy Bay Area orchid lovers. "They don't have time to take care of their plants, and they get tired of watching them die,"... White Oak Orchids offers six different growing environments in which to re-create the plants' original climate. Both businesses offer pickup and delivery services. As soon as the delicate petals drop to the floor, owners can send their pride and joy off to a greenhouse for cultivation. Once buds reappear on the spike, the angiosperm is returned to its fair-weather owner. ... Sally Robertson, the Bolinas-based artist who paints posters for the San Francisco Orchid Society's annual Pacific Orchid Exposition, boards her collection at California Orchids, paying $55 a month for the service. Some of her plants only come home to visit once a year. ... Nisbet [California Orchids] boards about 12,000 plants for around 180 customers, some for as long as 20 years. Nisbet recommends her clients get face time with their absent underlings to watch how they grow. And just as children get rejected from Ivy League schools, some parents have to face the bitter reality that sometimes their orchids just aren't good enough. Collectors who want to board their orchids have to have their plants' condition, size, and ideal habitat evaluated first. It sounds harsh, but Nisbet says she doesn't think grocery store varieties are worth the upkeep. Once evaluated, the orchids are assigned to different areas of the nursery. The clients pay for the square footage their plants occupy. Nisbet charges boarders $55 a month for the minimum space of 10 square feet. (White Oak Orchids charges $5 per square foot at a minimum of seven square feet.) The price includes delivering the rebloomed plants to San Francisco and southern Marin". source and complete news item : http://www.sfbg.com/40/06/x_biznews.html ********** Regards, Viateur _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
