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Rene Van Rems

We are delighted to welcome Rene Van Rems, AIFD (American Institute of Floral Designers) to our society for the first time. Rene is “artist in residence” at the San Diego Botanic Garden and has produced 20 of the Gala in the Gardens fundraisers from its inception. Rene knows the garden well throughout his 42 year relationship with the former Quail Botanical Garden, ever since he landed from Amsterdam as a horticulture exchange student. He is the San Diego Botanic Garden Creative Director for the Palomar and San Diego County Orchid Society’s “World of Orchids”, which just finished a sell-out 6-week exhibition.

In his talk titled "Artistic Design of the World of Orchids Show at the San Diego Botanic Garden" Rene will share his creative insights as it relates to plant display, composition, and how to get the most visual value of each species. Rene will present a visually exciting lecture on the principles and elements of design, focusing on color, texture and proportion. He will also cover the subject of visual perception and the role our emotions play in viewing (artistic) works of art. Enjoy a custom produced “behind the scenes” tour of the highly popular SDBG “World of Orchids”. The plant table will consist of the remaining plants from Fred Clarke’s donated cattleyas plus a few others.    Read more »

Fred Clarke We are happy to welcome back Fred Clarke who will speak on ‘Spotted and Splashed Cattleyas’. Spotted and splashed cattleyas come in many colors and shapes. Fred will teach us about the important breeding plants and what hybrids are available for the orchid enthusiast and highlight many of the interesting orchids he has developed in this class. In conclusion Fred will cover the ‘best growing practices’ for cultivation of these colorful and showy orchids.

As many of you know, Fred is a world renown hybridizer and grower of award winning cattleya species and hybrids as well as several other classes of orchids. He is also a long time, generous supporter of the Palomar Orchid Society and one of our most favorite speakers. Fred has been growing orchids for over 42 years and has been hybridizing for 38 of those years. With over 34 years as a professional grower and manager in the horticultural industry, Fred applies these skills at his orchid nursery, Sunset Valley Orchids, located in Vista, California, just north of San Diego. His nursery’s website has considerable information, plants for sale and many beautiful pics of his award-winning orchids.

Fred is a passionate orchid grower whose curiosity in orchids is broad and varied. Although developing Cattleya hybrids has been his sustaining interest, he is also actively creating new Paphiopedilum and Aussie Dendrobium hybrids plus some other generas including Sarcochilus, Zygopetalum Alliance, Lycaste, and Stanhopea and their relatives.   Read more »

Carlos LopezPOS welcomes back our friend Carlos Lopez as our May speaker. Carlos will present an interesting talk on ‘Habinerias and their Hybrids’. He will review the species and hybrids from this class of orchids and discuss culture and care for these unusual and beautiful terrestrial orchids.

Many of us know Carlos from his work at Sunset Valley Orchids. Carlos is a Business student at Mira Costa College who has been cultivating orchids for over 10 years. His orchid venture began at the age of thirteen years old when he started to follow his father to work at Sunset Valley Orchids. Before he knew it, he was volunteering at the nursery and was helping clean orchid flasks, repot orchids, and doing small tasks. Carlos eventually began to become more involved in the nursery's operations/maintenance and started to take part in attending orchid shows and selling orchids at the SVO booths. He is currently Sunset Valley Orchids Greenhouse specialist and has years of experience with Cattleya, Catasetum, Australian Dendrobiums, and Sarcochilus orchids. Carlos is currently training to become an American Orchid Society Judge and works with Orchid Digest as well. This month’s plant table will consist of orchids from Carlos’s collection and from SVO. 

Bill WongAlex NadzanDue to a last minute cancellation of our planned April speaker, we are replacing the speaker with a program addressing ‘Practical Aspects of Pest Identification and Management’. This is a timely topic as we go forward into Spring where pests and diseases become more of a problem as the weather improves.  Alex Nadzan and Bill Wong will discuss the common orchid pests and diseases we deal with and provide practical methods to address them using both organic and chemical treatments that are readily available to the orchid hobbyist. Topics will include identifying bacterial and fungal diseases, mealybugs, scale, thrips, slugs and snails, viruses and rodent damage and how they can be controlled during the growing season. There will be a demo on use of Rega virus test strips to detect common orchid viruses.  Attendee participation is encouraged and there will be ample time for discussion and questions at the meeting. 

The plant table will consist of plants from SVO and everyone who participates will be guaranteed of at least one plant for the evening.