Ben Jacob looks back on his lifelong passion for Britain’s native orchids, and reveals why he has risked heavy fines and even prison to save them
www.theguardian.com
I lived in a little terrace house in a city in the far southwest. Very soon my back yard was filled with salvaged orchids – nothing particularly rare, but all of them, technically, illegally obtained...
To solve the issue of overcrowding I decided to return them to where they belonged, back to the land. I thought the sight of these beautiful plants in conspicuous locations might raise people’s awareness of them and their plight, and maybe inspire others, just as they had inspired me. So began an unofficial guerrilla orchid rewilding programme. I planted them in various locations – parks, roadside verges, churchyards, beside sports fields – anywhere I thought they might survive.
Then I created a laboratory in my kitchen for propagating orchid seeds (orchid seeds, by the way, are very, very small, more like dust, and they don’t germinate like any other plant seed in the world). I cobbled the process together with things I could get hold of – think Breaking Bad but with a pressure cooker, microwave, air purifier and weird soups made of swede, pineapple juice and agar to nurture the growing seeds.