Steve Hampson, somewhere in the mountains of northwestern Sichuan province, China, at about 13,000 ft. elevation, with a wild poppy, Meconopsis integrifolia.
When we discovered that Steve Hampson has been gardening since the age of three, we knew he would fit right in at SCOS! Your webmaster's first words were about pulling weeds, and many of our members have bright green thumbs — and not only for orchids. We know this from the interest shown when we bring in a lecturer on some group of "orchid companion plants", such as bromeliads, plumerias, ferns, etc. Also, by the frequent questions whenever a lecturer happens to show a slide of some exotic non-orchid plant during a travelogue: "Where can I get one of those?" "Will it grow outdoors in Long Beach?"
A show of thumbs, please: How many of you were introduced to the garden as soon as you could walk? We are in good company, born with a love for the green earth and passionate about keeping it that way. Some of us have neighbors who plant mostly concrete and astroturf. We do what we can to compensate.
© Roger's Gardens
Part of Roger's Gardens. It's far more than a nursery! Not shown, there is a labyrinth of indoor garden rooms surrounding the main outdoor sales area. It's possible to get lost here, but it's great fun trying to find your way out of such a huge selection of plants and gardening ideas.
Steve grew up in New York and was educated at the University of Delaware and then received a Masters degree in Horticulture at Penn State. After a stint running an apple orchard and plant nursery in Pennsylvania, he settled in Southern California. He joined the famous Roger's Gardens in Corona Del Mar in 2003, where he is currently Senior Horticulturist. Roger's Gardens is a plant-lover's wonderland and a sort of local phenomenon: still independent, still providing extraordinary services to the most dedicated gardeners, including a full schedule of seminars and workshops, and a reliable source for the latest introductions and hard-to-find plants and gardening supplies.
© Roger's Gardens
A garden room at Roger's Gardens, set up for one of their popular classes, "All About Orchids with Steve Hampson".
Steve's classes at Roger's Gardens are regularly publicized in the Orange County Register, and you can even find videos of some of them on YouTube. He also writes a blog for the Roger's Gardens web site. As a true master horticulturalist, he is recognized as a local expert on such diverse topics as sweet peas, water lilies, dahlias, daffodils, and all sorts of bulbs, peonies, as well as orchids. He is very fond of the pleurothallid alliance and grows a large collection of those species.
Steve is also a member of the editorial board for Orchid Digest. He is a frequent contributor of articles and photographs. He is also an accomplished botanical illustrator. One of his watercolors, of the Paph. primary hybrid Green Envy (Paph. malipoense x primulinum) was featured on the cover of the Orchid Digest "Paphiopedilum Issue" (Vol. 82-4, Oct-Nov-Dec, 2018).
Steve travels extensively looking at flowers in the wild. In his talk for SCOS, he will recount two recent trips to China, one to Yunnan and the other to Sichuan, looking for slipper orchids and other species. His talk is entitled "Wild Orchids in China".
© 2019 Steve Hampson
Paphiopedilum hirsutissimum in the wild. We're not telling you where it was found, but maybe somewhere in China. Paphs are so endangered in their natural habitat that it is now considered bad form to reveal any information at all about where to find them, for fear that hordes of plant-nappers will pull them up by the roots and sell them at local markets. Or, as a recent study documented, smuggle them through unguarded border areas into other countries. It's very likely that most of those smuggled plants will soon end up dead.
Orchids are victims of their own beauty. Through countless generations of mutation and natural selection, they have come up with the winning combination of form, color, and fragrance to entice pollinators, but those same adaptations have also attracted the attention of humans. There's something about orchids that makes people grab them and carry them off. That's how they ended up in our houses and gardens, of course, but the downside is that many of them may soon be completely extinct in nature. In some areas, however, it is still possible to see an occasional Paph, but those are usually the ones high up on a cliff face that nobody has figured out how to harvest.
Roger McKinnon, sometimes known as the "mayor of real estate" in Corona Del Mar
Who's Roger? There really was a Roger behind Roger's Gardens, but he's no longer associated with the nursery. He is Roger McKinnon, well known in Costa Mesa for his other business, Roger's Realty, and for his involvement in the community. He started Roger's Gardens as a garden center in Costa Mesa in 1965. The business was sold in 1970 to Gavin Herbert Sr., who kept the name but moved the business to its current location in Corona Del Mar.