Gentlemen and Their Orchids

“Rippon Lea is a name one associates with orchids”
Australasian Home Beautiful 1930

Rippon Lea was famous across Australia and the world for its vast orchid collections. Frederick Sargood and later Benjamin Nathan caught “Orchidmania”, the Victorian obsession with orchids.

They constructed state-of-the-art hothouses and elaborate show conservatories across the grounds. These housed thousands of award-winning plants.

Victorians were avid collectors, and in the mid 19th century, Britain was in the grip of “Orchidelirium” or orchid fever. It was a rich man’s hobby.

Like everything rare and precious, orchids represented wealth and privilege. You needed enormous funds to import, nurture and display these precious exotic blooms from across the globe.

Supply was limited with plants secured for wealthy orchid fanatics at great expense from their natural habitats by an industry of ‘plant hunters’.

After Sargood’s visit to England in the early 1880s he caught the orchid obsession. He was determined to build the largest collection yet in Australia at Rippon Lea.

He returned to Melbourne with the first cuttings and plants, and the major parts for a large conservatory and six glasshouses. He also employed a new head gardener in Adam Anderson. Anderson had trained at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire – home to one of the world’s largest conservatories.

“I was never more interested in any subject in my life than orchids” Charles Darwin 1862

The Victorian age was the age of plant exploration. Orchids, with their impossible colours, variations and erotically suggestive flowers, fascinated many.

As the British Empire expanded, exotic plants from Africa, India, the Far East, the Americas and the West Indies became fashionable.

These plants needed protection to grow in new environments – hothouses, careful irrigation systems and specialist gardeners.

Benjamin Nathan bought Rippon Lea in 1909 partly because of the existing glasshouses and gardens. He started to build and extend them and his orchid collection.

He built the biggest show conservatory in Victoria and Australia by Rippon Lea’s house entrance (now lost) and his complex of hothouses housed around 2,700 plants. Up to 28 gardeners were employed for his twenty acres of gardens.

“For 30 years the late Mr. Benjamin Nathan had been forming the collection of orchids at his home, Ripponlea, which has become famous far beyond Australia” Argus August 1935

Over the decades Nathan won multiple prizes and awards and he was always keen to share his displays with fellow enthusiasts. On his death his orchid collection was considered one of the largest and most impressive in Australia.

The vast proportions of Nathan’s orchid houses seem incredible today. A few specimen orchids and exotic plants can still be seen inside the drawing room conservatory.