23-05-2025
Aussie orchid turns heads at London's prestigious Chelsea Flower Show
Celebrity sightings at the Chelsea Flower Show are a dime a dozen.
The prestigious annual garden extravaganza — widely considered the world's most famous — draws a stream of A-listers to west London.
If you looked up from the colourful exhibits this year, you might even have caught a glimpse of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, who are annual attendees.
David Beckham, Joanna Lumley and Piers Morgan were also among those sashaying between the blooms.
But spotting the Australian Great Sun Orchid. Well, that's much rarer.
It was the first time the purple flower has ever been displayed at the show, and that's for a good reason.
The orchid grows naturally only in specific parts of southern Australia, where it flowers between September and December.
But at Chelsea this year, it bloomed months out of season, thousands of kilometres from its natural habitat, in a completely different climate.
The incredible feat saw judges from Britain's Royal Horticultural Society — the centuries old charity behind the show — reward it with a gold medal.
"It's like winning the plant Olympics," said Kinglsey Dixon, the West Australian botanist who masterminded the Great Sun Orchid's appearance.
"The gold is beyond the icing of the cake. It is the cake."
But it almost didn't happen.
The Australian flower was part of a wider exhibit which also showcased orchids from South-East Asia and the Pacific.
Assisted by the elite team at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens and other collaborators around the world, each display featured orchids as they would look in their natural habitat.
The Great Sun Orchid was planted in sandy soil amongst granite rocks and blackened sticks, taken from Professor Dixon's own Western Australian property after a recent bushfire.
It was in stark contrast to the tropical displays around it, and that was exactly what Professor Dixon intended.
"It's us. It's Australia," he said.
"It's a country of extremes and amongst all this, orchids are growing."
Kew's orchid team pitched the idea of bringing the rare flower to Chelsea eight months ago.
"I said, 'Yeah, but we need years,'" Professor Dixon said.
With transporting the plant from Australia and getting it to flower logistically impossible in that time frame, the team called on a colleague in Germany for help.
"I knew he had material that he's been growing for about 40 years from seed … I begged him, and he agreed," Professor Dixon said.
With the centrepiece secured, every other aspect was planned with the utmost precision, in the pursuit of winning gold.
The show's judging is notoriously strict.
It dates to 1913 and draws the world's most prominent gardeners to the smart streets of West London, not to mention celebrities and the British aristocracy.
Standards are eye-wateringly high, eclipsed perhaps only by the cost of an entry ticket, which can cost over 130 pounds ($270).
"We had some intel from previous years one display was disqualified because the font size was not quite the correct accredited size," Professor Dixon said.
"So we just were literally going around with tweezers, pulling off sand, pulling off grass and making sure the rocks are perfect."
Their hard work not only won gold, but the admiration of Camilla and Charles, who grow orchids in their Wildflower meadow at the king's country estate, Highgrove.
Charles has supported the species' conservation for many years.
The exhibition organisers hope the win at Chelsea can attract more support to protect them, as the species faces growing threats in every corner of the globe.
There are more than 30,000 species of orchids globally. They grow on every continent except Antarctica.
But their future is far from guaranteed.
"If you have degradation of land, fires out of season, other types of disruptions due to climate change, for example, then many plants and animals are then disrupted by those," said Mike Fay, the senior research leader in conservation genetics at Kew.
"The orchids are particularly sensitive."
Professor Fay explained the complex interactions orchids had with the environment meant they act as early warning systems for looming issues.
"If the orchid starts doing badly, then it's a sign that there's something major going wrong … they are the canary in the coal mine," Professor Fay said.
Scientists believe up to 60 per cent of orchids face possible extinction, and they're considered the most threatened plant group in Australia.
"It is important that every effort is made to arrest this decline for future generations to experience our incredible diversity," said Australian Orchid Foundation (AOF) co-chair Helen Richards.
"The AOF is delighted with the success that Kingsley has had with his display at Chelsea as it focuses local and international attention on the plight of Australia's orchid populations and the attempts being made to preserve our orchid heritage."
That sentiment is shared by the gold medal winners.
"It's not a message of despair but it's a message of a call to arms," Professor Dixon said.
"We can do it, and we can change it from bad news to a good news story very quickly."
