voice: Babs Wagner
Resource: Kemper Center fact sheet

I’m Babs Wagner and I take care of the Garden’s orchid collection. It’s one of the largest and finest in the country. We grow more than 8,000 orchid plants behind the scenes, in our greenhouses. They make up our largest living collection, representing over 2,500 unique species, varieties and hybrids. For this display, I try to show you as many different varieties as I can, so you can appreciate their amazing diversity.

We grow many rare and unusual specimens here. Some are over 100 years old. Many of the Cattleyas in this show are no longer available commercially. They were created many years ago and they are no longer produced.

Our collection emphasizes the kinds of orchids that can survive St. Louis’s hot summers. The stars of this show are the winter-bloomers. To get them to bloom on time, I manipulate the greenhouse temperatures, starting in October. The variety of orchids you see here changes over six weeks. We start with about 800. I switch out approximately 50 to 100 plants each week and replace them with fresh ones from the greenhouse. First thing every morning, I look for faded blossoms and slice them off with a sharp razor blade to keep the plants looking fresh.