Bill began growing orchids in the late 60’s after several years of tagging along with his father to visit friend’s greenhouses. Some of these growers were prominent growers in the area and some of you may remember them: Jack Sweet, Cliff Curry, John Matthews, John & Gloria Naugle, Gladys Whitesell, Richard Bates, and a few others.

He began to receive a few back bulbs from some of these folks and a few of them lived. He was off to the races after that. He built my first flask box when he was in high school . He grew up on 1800 acres of family owned ranch land and started working on Cattle ranches in the 70’s becoming familiar with Florida cypress swamps. He greatly enjoyed his adventures into these wonderful swamps. They became his refuge and  always had the since of traveling back hundreds of years in time when he entered one of these untouched places. He was able to find many of the Florida orchid species along with native ferns and a variety of wildlife.

He has been growing orchids most of his life and gets great pleasure now when he is making new hybrids mostly in the Cattleya alliance.

He has been fortunate enough to receive several AOS awards and register several of his own hybrids.

The greatest satisfaction for him is to have one of his hybrids awarded.

Now he is older than dirt and is still fascinated with orchids. Somewhere back in his memory he is still a young man on an afternoon adventure in a pristine Florida cypress head, oak hammock or creek bottom.

Bill Nunez ‘ AKA ‘ Rhizome Cowboy ‘