Orchid Events

Well here I am at Slapton at the start of my painting holiday, catching up with events from over a month ago so I can blog about my current work!
After a days indigo dyeing with Janice at Art Van Go , I went down to Bath and Gloucestershire for a couple of orchid related activities. Firstly to Writhlington School for the premiere screening of 'Plants Behaving Badly' for which I was filmed last year(wearing orchid earrings of course). Amazingly I hadn't ended up on the cutting room floor! The company is Panthenon, now Sky Vision and initially it's going to be shown in Germany where it was commissioned. Fancy dubbing David Attenborough who narrated it!

Writhlington is known for its orchid project, run by pupils , growing orchids for sale to fund trips to some amazing places where they train locals in propagation techniques. One of their most recent trips was to Rwanda (I couldn't resist supporting their work by buying some basketry) .

I was mainly interested in their lab facilities but they have a dedicated glasshouse where students were giving tours. I loved the colours of this Vanda.

After an excellent overnight stay in the Griffin Inn in Bath ( shame I didn't get back in time to sample the real ales , although when I mentioned that to the staff, they did offer me some beer for breakfast which I reluctantly declined) I headed off to see orchids of a different kind.

I spent a lovely morning in beautiful woodland pollinating flowers of the Red Helleborine and collecting leaf samples in bags of silica gel for DNA analysis.