Tribute to orchid guru
The lives of a leading Victorian orchid nurseryman and his illustrator son-inlaw have been reappreciated, thanks to a local history society. Descendants of Germanborn Frederick Sander and painter Henry Moon, along with members of the Fleetville Diaries history group, met to pay tribute at the Sander family’s recently restored burial plot at Hatfield Road cemetery in St Albans and recall their contribution to the orchid world.
Sander, who died in 1920, was the leading orchid supplier of his day and a passionate collector of new species, sending out collectors to tropical parts of the world to meet demand.
Newly discovered plants often changed hands for hundreds of pounds and his nursery in St Albans was the epicentre of the orchid
world, where Sander hybridised many species, often staying up all night to see a new hybrid bloom. Many species, such as the famous Vanda sanderiana, were named after him.
Although orchid collecting and hybridising was already big budget, with Moon as artist, he embarked on producing Reichenbachia, an epic, hugely expensive work on orchids. Although costs were funded by his profitable houseplant nursery in Bruges, Belgium, Frederick’s orchid obsession cost him dear. “Although his three sons implored him to stop, he wouldn’t,” said great grandson Peter Sander, a member of the RHS Orchid Committee. “Times then changed and orchid growing declined, but Frederick did more to popularise orchids than anybody else. He brought orchids to everyone.”