"Chuck Morin... orchid business... four commercial-scale greenhouses on his property... Morin, by day a lawyer and corporate secretary...
he built the first greenhouse on the property to house his personal orchid collection. ... he's spun out his personal collection into Paramount Orchids, a boutique nursery that houses about 60,000 orchid plants of roughly 2,200 different kinds. As a commercial greenhouse, Paramount Orchids likely has the biggest selection of orchids in Canada, and is among the top 10 in North America... Morin's dedication to orchids involves accommodating the high operating costs associated with running 8,000 square feet of greenhouses year-round. Morin... noting his day job at Paramount Resources helps to keep his greenhouse business alive. ... Morin said the greenhouses operate on natural gas and last year during the peak winter month cost him... $7,000 to run. ... Everything at the greenhouses is done by hand, from watering to potting. Morin has a full-time horticulturist, Bryon Fischer, who does the brunt of the work, and part-time employees and volunteers to help out. Morin goes into the greenhouse every morning, for a half-hour to 45 minutes before heading off to work, to mist or groom the plants. His weeknights are consumed by orchids too, as that's when he does the books, maintains the web page, plans the orders and responds to a lot of the mail-order inquiries. ... His obsession with orchids started in 1983... Morin's... hobby caused him to move to bigger houses to accommodate his collection, and he eventually bought 15 acres on the outskirts of Calgary, where he now runs Paramount Orchids. While Paramount Orchids started with common phalaenopsis, around 2002 they switched to importing... unusual phalaenopsis. Paramount Orchids has also moved primarily to ladyslippers, unusual species, ... unusual hybrids, oncidiums and miniatures." URL : http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/calgarybusiness/story.html?id=2605b003-a456-42d6-82cb-ae21a4b62340 ********************** Regards, VB _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
