Orchid Extravaganza Blooms At Longwood Gardens This Friday

By Molly Daly

KENNET SQUARE, Pa. (CBS) - Longwood Gardens launches its Orchid Extravaganza this Friday.

It hasn't been a very cold winter, but it has been a grey one. The Orchid Extravaganza at Longwood offers a cure for your monochromatic blues.

Executive Director Paul Redman says the conservatory and exhibition hall will be teeming with the exotic plants, "In those two spaces will be beautiful cymbidium orchids -- we've even added some additional fountains in the main conservatory. But in the exhibition hall, there're going to be these huge orbs, which are these hanging baskets of orchids, there're going to be these grand archways and towers that are going to be filled with orchids. I promise you this something that people have never seen before."

Listen to Molly Daly's interview with Paul Redman in this CBS Philly podcast:

He says the entire space will be bursting with orchids. "We'll have ladies' slippers, the patheopetlum, we'll have the phaius, the nun's hoods, and we have cattleyas. For anyone who's been to Hawaii, and they've gotten a beautiful orchid lei made of dendrobiums, we have dendrobiums, you name it -- we even have some others that you have never ever seen before."

Redman says orchids actually like winter. "The orchid room, which houses our permanent collection of orchids, really comes to life this time of year. Most people don't think of winter as being a good time of year for plants to be flowering, but it is actually this time of year that orchids are in their glory."

The Orchid Extravaganza ends with the International Orchid Show and Sale, March 23rd through 25th.

Redman says it'll knock your socks off. "I promise you that this is something that people have never seen before."

Click here for more information on the exhibit.