Local orchid shops soon to be pushing up daisies
The Inside the Bay Area wrote about the truth of being in the flower business. –Â
Three years ago, Dave Wright knew nothing about orchids, but he was filled with curiosity about the long rows of greenhouses he passed on his commute back home.
That sense of curiosity led him to stop at Fordyce Orchids on Isabel Avenue in Livermore and talk to the owners, who have been in the business for two generations.
These casual conversations and Wright’s own experiments led him to join a small but committed and thoroughly obsessed population that treasures orchids, a meaty flowering plant with streaks of purple, gray and red.
Fordyce has created scores of orchid fanatics over the years like Wright, who works as a food processing facility manager in the South Bay. He grows some 130 plants in his tiny Modesto apartment and spends two hours a day watering them.
Fordyce won’t be creating many new fans in the future.
After more than 26 years as part of the Orchid Ranch co-op in Livermore, Fordyce is closing, probably in February or March, making it another in the long list of mom-and-pop shops that have closed in part because of the abundance of mass produced orchids that are available cheaply at stores such as Costco.
Written by Bobbie on January 10th, 2006 with comments disabled.
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