November 2024 - Cindy Hill "My Top Ten Favorite Orchids and How to Grow Them"

Cindy HIll

We are delighted to welcome for the first time to our society Cindy Hill who will speak on ‘My Top Ten Favorite Orchids and How to Grow Them’. Cindy is very experienced, well-respected orchid hobbyist and AOS judge who has won several Best of Show and AOS awards for her beautifully grown orchids.

Cindy's lifelong love of nature and wildlife led her to major in Biology in college. She's been growing orchids for pleasure for almost 50 years, beginning on her kitchen windowsill in St. Louis. She moved to San Diego in 1982 and began growing plants outdoors on her small patio, then in a 7x7 ft lean-to greenhouse. Discovering microclimates – variations in temperature, light and moisture - even in her small yard, she gradually extended her collection. 



After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2005, her collection grew to over 700 plants in an intermediate greenhouse in Berkeley, then Daly City. Favorite genera include Dendrobium, Coelogyne, Holcoglossum, and Laelia. Her plants earned Best of Show three times at the Pacific Orchid Exposition in San Francisco, and have received the highest cultural and quality awards from the American Orchid Society. 
 


Cindy served as Acting Editor of Orchid Digest magazine and was an accredited judge with the AOS for many years.  
 


She has traveled to observe orchids in the wild in Madagascar, Borneo, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Peru. These experiences continue to help her develop an understanding of what an orchid's natural habitat looks, sounds, smells and feels like, which she can apply to her own cultivation methods. 


Cindy parted with most of her extensive collection before returning to her home in Solana Beach in 2019. These days she grows various Cochlioda, Dendrobium and Coelogyne species on her patio.      .

This month’s opportunity table will offer plants from our recent sale including some from Kalapana Tropicals and Sunset Valley Orchids.