The vibrant colours of these orchids caught my eye on David Parkinson’s stand at a recent show. He told me that Disa orchids grow near streams or near rainwater run off on Table Mountain in South Africa. This means the conditions they experience are quite harsh and the normal orchid growing advice such as potting up in a well-drained bark compost does not apply.

He recalled how he got started ‘I used to grow English native orchids as a hobby and I had ordered some seed from an orchid nursery in Dorset. On the back of the catalogue there was a picture of a Disa orchid which attracted my attention so I bought three but didn’t know how to look after them. I worked out that you must not let them dry out. Later on the nursery sold him the Disa collection – that was 16 years ago.’

Dave’s golden rules for Disas
 
Keep them cool but give frost protection in winter – they put fleece over pots in a greenhouse.
 
Stand pots in rainwater, keep compost wet. Disas like sphagnum moss compost but not rockwool.
 
Disas don’t like too much feed – they don’t like high salt levels. A very dilute feed in the trays not the pots when the plants are actively growing – after flowering and in spring.
 
Plants produce new growth from stolons – pot up in autumn.

While it was the warm orange and red colours that caught my eye – after talking to Dave and his wife I decided to buy pink and a yellow ones (£12 each with plenty of young plantlets forming at the base) to try as exotic bog plants as they seemed to be the hardiest.

Dave’s nursery in East Yorkshire is not open to the public but they do attend plant shows and sell by mail order – see www.daveparkinsonplants.co.uk