09/03/2026
Sometimes the life is hard. We worked several years (2015 - 2022) to recollect the orchid collection that King Dom Luis I of Portugal had created 1879 - 1881. We also made two pilot greenhouses to study the problems that were part of the reasons why the collection disappeared.
The director of 'Jardim Botanic da Ajuda' wrote 1881 in his Annual report "We had only primitive greenhouses to use. That is why we lost several important orchids"
Heating during winter was solved correctly but summers were too hot for about one third of the plants in the collection. We did a test house in Alcobaca, Portugal, same size as in Ajuda, same position to sun but totally different solutions to keep the warm days under control. Our solutions has shown that all orchids in this collection can grow and show flower in one properly designed greenhouse.
When those test were ready somebody whispered that a known group is preparing to confiscate the "historical collection". So we moved all to Finland. We have in Finland two places where we have been growing orchids about 20 years. But previously one problem was heating. During cold winter days the greenhouse needed more than 20 kW to keep the inside at +15 degrees or more. The work in Alcobaca gave us solutions to solve even that problem. With a new design our greenhouse of 300 sqm needs after renovation only 3 kW to keep the inside (and the orchids) at +20 degrees. This is less than that size of orchid house needs during winter in Portugal.
And then the hard life hit us, two years ago. A real "killer bacteria" hit the small wound at my heel. Incompetence in the local hospital got the process to become dangerous. We moved to our old home in Eastern Finland and there professional persons managed to heal it, but now I have been out of any work "until today" and then Tuulikki accidentally slept away. So the situation is now different.
But the Spring is coming, we wait for the Swans to come again and in Janhua the orchid exhibition will open within one month. In the near future we are going to make two copies of the historical collection - one in Janhua the other in Hasula. At this stage we do not plan to transport the collection to Portugal, we just wait until the situation there will be clear.
