It's an interesting prospect. I've experimented for years with using orchids for landscaping, with mixed results. The problem with doing this in warm zones is that a lot of the truly hardy genera (cypripedium, for instance) can't handle the sporadic warmth in winter and the hot, humid nights of the coastal southeast. I grow them, but not really well yet, except for kentuckiense and its hybrids. The one unequivocal success has been Bletilla; I have about 20 species and hybrids, and they all do well in the ground all year, and would probably enjoy zone 8b even more.

When you get into moving plants in for the winter, even into a cold greenhouse, the possibilities expand. Some of the warmth tolerant miniature cymbidiums have done very well for me, and our southern falls are long enough that they can stay outside long enough to bloom in the garden. Phaius, both tankervillae and especially flavus (which is semi-deciduous) can be stored cool for the winter in a state of suspended animation, then bedded out for the summer to bloom. Thunia alba goes completely dormant during the winter - I store the pendulous pseudobulbs in their pots in my unheated garage in the winter, in the manner of tuberous begonias, sinningias, etc., then bring them out and begin watering them when growth begins in spring. Some of the Laelias (particularly those derived from L. anceps)and Encyclias (based on tampense and another florida species whose name escapes me)will do pretty well if they're not allowed to freeze, but a lot of them bloom in winter, so I'm not sure they're worth the effort if you're going for outdoor bloom.

My favorite outdoor orchids last year were Spathoglottis hybrids (one of which I got off the sale table after it finished blooming at Walmart for $1!). They're very tropical and HATE being kept too cool in winter, but seem to tolerate my 50 degree minimum greenhouse, where they sulk until June, but after being bedded out (like coleus or begonias) they bloomed like crazy for months on end. They'd be worth hauling inside, and they're not that large.

Hope this helps - would be interested in the suggestions of others.

Check out Asiatica nursery (www.asiaticanursery.com). They have alot of Dendrobium moniliforme hybrids that are apparently hardy to zone 8a. These are showy, epiphytic growing orchids as well. Also check out some of their ferns!

do you have any fire orchids

I grew cattleya orchids outside in the LAX area of SoCal. They grew fine until they bloomed. If I left them outside with the blooms, the flowers got fertilized by insects, closed up, and turned ugly. We learned that fast and brought them indoors as soon as the first flower opened. I selected the plants based on the fragrance of the flowers, so I wanted them to last.

Bletilla I have grown in the ground as far north as Virginia 7b. I had an issue due to too wet and one winter the temps got down 15 many were lost but a good number survived - I think because they had a good snow cover to insulate them. The next year, we had a dusting a couple of times, but the temps dropped to 5 off and on a couple of times over a few weeks but then went back and forth to 50s. Some popped out in Spring but then we got tons of rain that spring and summer and I think it was all just too much change of temps and the extreme temp lows and I never saw another one. But an aunt had a huge bed of them, no less than 200 probably more that had spread from like 10 little bulbs 30+ years before but they were in a better protected area than mine and the north side was protected by azaleas and rhodies and she always put a wire fence about 12-18” tall around the beds and filled with pine needles with a piece of frost covering fabric (not plastic) stretched across the top of the wire and draped down the sides and clipped. They got rain, snow and plenty of air and sunshine to the ground - and like daffodils etc, they popped up each spring and bloomed. Some years she said they be reduced in really cold winters but they just kept expanding and would catch back up. Back then (1940s) you could get fairly easily- coarse German peat (not the Canadian peat moss like we have today) and she mixed it with good aged compost when she originally planted them and made up any new beds.She double dug beds and each fall the beds got 3-4”(min 2”, max 4”) of well rotted leaf compost from the prior fall that she mixed with alfalfa hay in that prior fall too. It was premium quality horse/dairy as her niece always had horses so it was available. I was so sorry after she died the new owners were told but it meant nothing to them so it was all dug up. Maybe had they seen them in bloom, it would have been different. I’d tried to get them but it all happened too fast, and her administrator wasn’t family to have known. So sad, she had multiple colors and were so pretty. Kinda like the tons of wild lady slippers I saw that got lost to development on the edges of many forest areas we use to ride through and would see only in the spring — just beautiful but got bulldozed and many times we couldn’t find the new owners if we even knew it was sold, properties were posted and most you just went riding one day, and it had all been logged, bulldozed and foundations were being started — the first you knew of the property being sold. Just happened so fast! Sad and just frustrating. Probably didn’t matter...they are very difficult to dig and re-acclimate elsewhere. I had tried several times, with a couple, on our property and even took large quantities of the soil but they are very touchy. I had hoped to establish several colonies of them so to maintain the group in total in case something happened in that one area but could never get them to live. They just need the microorganisms and microbes, spores, etc. from the area all through the column down and around where they grow and I think too they need they need to stay with the plants they have always grown with and were attached to via feeder roots, mycorrhiza, and all the biological environment of a particular spot. A friend tried to move an entire bed that they had records of being in a location for 50-75 years - a road was coming through. She had no choice and the property was condemned. She did everything to prevent it for like 20 years but finally lost out. Being a wild collection held off the road for a while but eventually the needs of people for the road and the need for housing and shopping overwhelmed the needs of the plants. All those years of healthy plants ...and she moved them to what looked like an exact duplicate location/environment with all the advice from several experts, huge quantities of the original soil - made no difference and darned if every one of them died within 2-3 years.