Orchid Daze, the Garden’s annual celebration of its beloved signature plant collection, opens on Valentine’s Day with a dazzling burst of color and fragrance filling gallery-like spaces.
The exhibition transforms the Fuqua Conservatory and Orchid Center into three interlocking modernist galleries featuring vibrant orchid hybrids and culminates in a sumptuous display of the Garden’s permanent collection of species orchids. The latter, representing 2,000 species, is extraordinary in depth and breadth, reflecting the Garden’s commitment over the past 38 years to building its flagship plant collection.
Upon entering the Conservatory Lobby, guests will experience a modernist-inspired gallery featuring a warm palette of yellow, tangerine and scarlet orchids. The gallery walls are embedded with living Cattleya, Dendrobium and Pansy orchids in portrait-like niches.
Adjoining the Conservatory Rotunda is a grand glass hallway rising two stories. Here, the gallery becomes a labyrinth of walls with insets of graceful arching Moth Orchids and Cattleya orchids. The passage opens into a sunlit Atrium where the orchid palette changes to include yellow and wine-colored Slipper Orchids and Dancing Lady Orchids. A reflecting pond encircled by Zygopetalum orchids is framed by a pavilion of heavy beams and geometric orchid columns. Beds of fragrant orchids, bromeliads and other lush tropicals surround the interior.
In the Orchid Display House, visitors are greeted with a cool-toned palette of pink Oncidium and blue-violet Dendrobium nobile orchids framed in a theatrical setting by shimmering translucent panels.
After experiencing these galleries of stunning orchid hybrids – designed by Tres Fromme of 3Fromme Design, with assistance from Wilson Carroll of More Than Matter – guests are sure to be inspired to explore the Garden’s magnificent permanent collection of 2,000 orchid species, only about 10 percent of which are regularly on display. Orchid Daze brings this globe-spanning collection into view via two looping pathways meandering through the Orchid Display and Tropical High Elevation houses.
Finally, the Orchid Display House leads to an interpretative gallery, where visitors will discover the behind-the-scenes story of the Garden’s orchid conservation efforts, learn about orchid biology and discover the history of the orchid collection and the Orchid Center.