It’s time to take a trip to the mystical green and cool town of Los Baños and dip into some of its hot spring resorts. Yet another treat for travelers and plant hunters alike, is the regular staging of the Los Baños Orchid Garden Show. This year’s garden show will open tomorrow, April 23. It will end on May 2.

Malvarosa Orchids, a consistent winner in garden shows, will execute the center exhibit. Again, visitors will behold a kaleidoscope of orchids from the various participants of the show. Aside from orchids, there will also be a lot of bromeliads, tillandsias, ferns, aroids, cycads, euphorbias, medinillas, mussaendas, flowering ornamentals, fruit tree seedlings and a lot more.

Other exhibitors will include Cattleya, Mabuhay Orchids, VS Orchids, Robele’s Garden, Gintong Talulot, Flowerbox, Genesis, Exotica, Vic’s Orchids and Ornamentals, Adonis Garden, Myrna Orticio, Verunees and Pandang. Aside from their exhibits, they will also be having commercial booths.

A lecture on “Vermiculture” will be delivered by an expert from CRTD on Sunday, April 26. On May 2, a lecture titled “Orchid Growing – Media and Fertilization” will be given by Vic Chin. All lectures are at 3 pm.

If you are looking for new and hard to find plants, this is the place to go. New plant cultivars like the Red Christina, a new cultivar from Christina or Pink Eugenia, and a limited number of Mussaenda Emerlinda Roman, will be on sale at the show for the first time.

Garden shows like this in Los Banos help to promote the Philippine ornamental plant Industry and inspire our local plant breeders to come up with new plant hybrids for the local and international trade through plant competitions. It is through this event that most of the Philippine plants are conserved and mass propagated, providing sustainable livelihood to thousands of plant propagators and collectors in the Laguna, Quezon and Batangas area. Filipinos are also distinguished landscape artists, and with these events, their skill in landscaping is continuously sharpened.