Our first weekend workshop of the year was a great success despite the terrible wet day.

We were ensconced in the meeting room at the back of the Curvilinear Range at The National Botanic Gardens, the out of the way location was well sign posted and across the day we welcomed visitors from all parts of the world.

The members who attended brought some in-flower orchids for the display and raffle as well as some problems to fix. Biggest of these was a huge pot-bound cymbidium  brought in by Carmel that Chair Marie Hourigan took to work on with a saw and made five new plants from it.

Pat brought in a fabulous specimen of Dendrobium ‘Berry Oda’ which was donated to he raffle as first prize.

Star of the show though was the display of orchids which lit up the room with their beauty and colour. The display included several genus from some very miniature Oncidium ‘twinkle’, a couple of Paphiopedilums (Paph-i-o-pedi-lum) from David, a Coelogyne (see-LODGE-uh-nee) flaccida from Pat, and beautiful selection of Phalaenopsis and Jewel Orchids.

We raised €100 with the raffle and the re-potting and gained a couple of new members.

The evening meetings have a lot to cram in in a short period, so it was a great occasion to spend sometime chatting with members and discussing in detail the issues they have or their successes.

We will be hosting another weekend workshop in June and we hope to make that an even larger event.