WELCOME

“Short of Aphrodite, there is nothing lovelier on this planet than a flower, nor more essential than a plant…..Human beings are happiest and most comfortable when living with flora.

[Tompkins & Bird, The Secret Life of Plants, Penguin 1974]

 

The Orchid Academy® offers recognised courses in:

  

Study Horticulture with our recognised courses and you can:

  • qualify for employment in the horticultural industry
  • earn an income
  • take advantage of opportunities here and abroad
  • make your living from horticulture
  • start your own horticultural business
  • enjoy your life

About The Orchid Academy®

I’m Robert Friend, the proprietor of The Orchid Academy®. I’ve been a horticulturalist ever since I can remember. I had my first vegetable garden when I was about seven years old. Then I grew cacti for several years before being “bitten by the orchid bug” in 1949. I sold my first orchid (to a local nursery) in 1951 and did gardening and re-potting jobs in the neighbourhood in my spare time and school holidays. I set up a nursery, growing pot plants, bromeliads and orchids in 1977. I was a director of an Orchid Growers Co-operative for several years, a cut-flower export business. As a commercial nurseryman operating a wholesale and retail nursery, I raised thousands of orchid species seedlings from seed and exported plants and flasks of orchid seedlings worldwide. I operated a licenced quarantine house and imported plants from various overseas suppliers.

I have maintained an interest in garden landscaping since 1960 and have landscaped gardens, both my own and commercially, over the years. Some of my landscaping work is depicted in Practical Guide to Home Landscaping (Reader’s Digest Association Pty Ltd 1973).

In 1981 I planted a tropical fruit orchard in far northern New South Wales and and managed it for the next 10 years. I operated a wholesale and retail rare and exotic plant nursery at the same time as the orchard.

I have given many talks and presentations at Orchid Society meetings and Garden Society meetings both in Australia and in the USA. I was a speaker at the ABC Gardening Expo in Sydney in August 2007. I have written several books including two books on orchids and have had many magazine articles published in the horticultural press.

My latest book is Growing Orchids in Your Garden (Timber Press, Oregon 2004). I have travelled extensively including Southeast Asia, the USA and the UK, researching gardens and landscape designs in general and orchids in the landscape in particular. My wife and I have spent several months in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library and the library of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew researching orchid history. In 2004 we travelled in Oregon, then across the Gulf states in the USA, around Florida and to California researching garden landscapes and the use of orchids, bromeliads and other companion plants in the garden landscape.

As well as a horticulturist, I am qualified as an Australian lawyer specialising in commercial and intellectual property transactions. I am a qualified trainer and have trained real estate students for the Real Estate Institute of Queensland for whom I have also written training materials. I am married to my wife Lili who is a civil celebrant. Our children are grown up and we have six grandchildren. At present we live beside the Nerang River where I am establishing an orchid garden and hybridising large-flowered “crucifix” orchids to produce a range of easy-care garden plants in new colours.