When Steve Potter joined the Noosa District Orchid and Foliage Society (NDO&FS) last year, his wife joked with him that he used to belong to a football club and now it’s an orchid club.
But Steve has plenty of male company there as almost 40 per cent of members are men.
Back in the day, Steve was a professional football player in the United Kingdom.
He started out apprenticed to Manchester City as a teenager, before moving on to Swansea City for a few years.
Then after a brief period in Vancouver, a middle-of-the-night phone call offered him a job in Melbourne, where football is known as soccer. He arrived in Australia on New Year’s Eve, 1979.
But Steve’s interest in growing things goes back way before football. It’s an interest he shares with his dad as well as his son, who grows vegetables and fruit.
“We always stayed on farms with our grandparents on weekends and holidays when I was young,” Steve said.
“My dad grew up on a farm.”
Steve’s father Derek Potter, 90, who now lives with his wife in Twin Waters, recalls that growing up they were almost self-sufficient with seasonal vegetables and collecting mushrooms.
“We had nut and fruit trees and hens and ducks and even a pig for meat,” he adds.
After finishing school Derek worked on the railways before being called up for National Service, serving in Korea.
On his return he worked in a variety of jobs before becoming a teacher.
“We always tried to have a garden wherever we lived, growing food for the table,” says Derek.
When Steve’s time in Melbourne finished, he bought acreage at Doonan and had two horses, chickens, dogs, cats, flowers, palm trees, and orchids.
“I always loved tropical gardens,” says Steve.
Meanwhile, Derek and his wife retired and were making visits to Australia to see Derek’s grandchildren. They were astonished at the way things grew on Steve’s property.
“We decided to move here and bought a newly-built house in Eumundi in 1988,” says Derek, who transformed the bare grounds with gardens and fruit trees.
“We weren’t really introduced to orchids until we moved to here,” he says.
“We met a forester who would give us orchids from trees he had cut down, and there were rock orchids, which were so beautiful.
“One year at the Cooroy orchid show we won a raffle. The prize was a ‘dancing lady’ orchid, and we’ve given away so many pieces of that orchid, which is huge now. Instead of a bunch of flowers, we buy an orchid.”
While Derek never joined a club, he and Steve always enjoyed growing orchids.
Steve now regularly attends orchid society meetings and shows and particularly enjoys the special growers’ meetings held on-site in members’ gardens.
Trevor Cook, president of NDO&FS which celebrates 40 years this year, confirms that there have traditionally been a lot of men in orchid clubs.
“I think there was a bit of mystique about growing them, which might have attracted men,” says Trevor, who moved to Noosa four years ago from Sydney and joined the society soon after.
“But they’re not as hard to grow as people think with the right orchids for the climate. My father grew cymbidiums and I took them over.
“I also tried growing cattleyas and killed them all, but once I moved up here I discovered I could grow them and I ended up building shadehouses.
“Our society is a friendly mix of people and some of our best growers are women.”
