Donna BallardOur society welcomes for the first time Donna Ballard of the San Fernando Valley Orchid Society who will talk to us on ‘Growing Orchids in the Middle of a Drought’. Although we are not under drought conditions at this time, most of our summers and falls in Southern California experience serious drought conditions and we can clearly benefit from Donna’s experience and suggestions for managing our orchids under such conditions. Donna is a shared speaker with our sister society SDCOS and she will be speaking on ‘The Difference Between Orchid Seedlings and Meristem Clones’ on Tuesday, February 6th in Balboa Park, Casa de Prado, Room 101 and Zoom Simulcast at 7:30 pmDonna is a native Californian, and is an Accredited American Orchid Society Judge. After over 30 years of loving, caring for and studying plants, she went on to work as a professional interior house plant maintenance technician until 4 years ago. She has since retired and works as a part time volunteer at the Huntington Botanical Garden’s Thornton Estate Orchid Conservatory in San Marino. She currently has approximately 460 sq. feet of greenhouse, shade house and interior growing areas where she has over 1300 Cattleyas, Paphiopedilums, Cymbidiums, Dendrobiums, Sarcochilus, miniature Vandas and novelty Phalaenopsis orchids as well as several other genera.
This month’s opportunity table will be from one of our local growers.