Jade Orchids

"An orchid will live forever as long as you don’t kill it,” he said. "Orchids, they believe, came through the Ice Age. Because the seeds are encrusted. Orchids were the hobby of kings. They were the only ones who could send people around the world to collect them.”

 ~Dave White

Turning away from the hubbub of the 951 corridor onto Sabal Palm Road is like stepping back in time to a Naples of yesteryear. The bumpy road leads you to Morgan Road, where you soon discover as bucolic a location as you’ll find anywhere in Southwest Florida.

A short dirt and gravel drive deposits you smack in the middle of Jade Orchids, Collier County’s only orchid growing operation.

At first glance it looks like a sleepy operation. There are no real parking spaces - just try not to park on the grass seems to be the only rule.

A genial looking 80-year-old gentleman with shockingly blue eyes, dressed in bib overalls, welcomes two moms who have converged from points north and east of the orchid emporium. A lithe 77-year-old woman emerges from the old-Florida style building with a screened-in porch to help a regular customer who has dropped by to learn some of the fine points of repotting an orchid. In the blink of an eye Jade Orchid’s laid back parking lot is completely full.

This is certainly not a sleepy operation. Vibrant would be a better description of Jade Orchids - and its owners, Dave and Judy White. Forget any misconceptions you may have about folks slowing down in what would normally be considered their retirement years. The Whites are workers.

"We don’t let any grass grow under our feet here,” Dave White chuckles.

Dave is the son of an Alabama sharecropper who grew up picking cotton. Judy is the product of hard-working parents in Montreal.

"We started with one orchid 45 years ago,” Dave said. "Bought my wife one. I worked for Boran, Craig and Schreck Construction, she worked for Naples Steel. On vacations we used to go to Mexico, Jamaica, South America, collecting orchids. That’s back when it was legal to collect them out of the wild. Then she decided to quit her job. And we had this property out here. We said, ‘That ain’t gonna work.’ We had 4,000 orchids as a hobby. I said, ‘I’m going to put you in business.’ I built her that greenhouse out there and that’s how it got started."

“We bought the property in 1985,” Judy White added. “We’ve had orchids since the late 1970s. We opened up for business in 1987. We’ve been in business here for 34 years - forever!”

The Whites preside over a 3.5-acre property with six buildings, all built by Dave, whose building resume on Marco Island is long and impressive.

As the White’s 4,000 orchid hobby suggests, collecting the unique flowers is addictive. Kitty McGuire traveled from Davey and Heather Meaney from Sarasota to consummate the sale of a French horn. They decided to feed their orchid addiction by meeting at Jade Orchids, which was an equal drive for both ladies. The ladies had never met, nor had they ever visited Jade Orchids. They were thrilled with what they found.

“To say collecting orchids is addictive is an understatement,” Kitty McGuire joked.

“Do you have this many?" Dave White joked back. "They are addictive. It’s an addictive hobby, let me tell you. We sell one, and you get it to bloom again yourself, we’ve got you hooked.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t have the space to have this many orchids,” McGuire said while sniffing an orchid. “Is this one fragrant at night?”

Dave White, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of orchids, gives McGuire the bad news that the object of her affection is not fragrant. According to Dave, only 10 percent of orchids are fragrant.

“Everybody loves fragrance,” he said. "Believe it or not, a lot of times it’s the difference between a customer buying them or not."

The Whites’ sprawling orchid compound is impressively organized. Nice straight lines of plants seem to go on forever. Like everything else in his career, Dave White learned his organizational skills on the job.

“I was in the military for 12 years - they pretty well organize you,” he said. “I was stationed on Guam during Vietnam. Of course, that’s where we flew the B52 missions, out of Guam. I spent seven out of my 12 years on Guam. We were mapping out all of the countries that we ended up attacking. That was 1960-61.”

But it was likely Dave’s stateside Air Force experience that contributed to the development of his organizational skills.

"Then I went to Plattsburgh, New York,” he said. "They were putting in a new Atlas missile base. I was the head man in supply, setting up all the parts for the Atlas missile launch. Then when the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out, we had 13 missile silos, we had the Atlas missile, we could hit anywhere in the world.”

Dave likes an acronym he learned in the Air Force: OJT. In fact, you could say he credits on-the-job training for much of his success in life.

“It’s like any job,” he reasons, "if you work at it every day, you get to know the names of all of the orchids. It’s like they told us in the military, it’s OJT—on-the-job training.”

White’s OJT started back on the farm in Alabama.

"I grew up in Alabama picking cotton. My dad was a sharecropper. We’d go broke, and he’d go off and get a construction job, because he was a carpenter. I was carrying two concrete blocks, one in each hand, by the time I was five years old. We’d trek off to South Carolina. He worked on the Savannah River Project atomic energy plant. Then we’d come back to Alabama with a couple of dollars in his pocket and we’d try cotton farming again. He’d go broke and we’d be off somewhere else…like Jacksonville, Florida.”

The construction skills he learned from his father paid off for White when he left the Air Force after 12 years and landed in Indiana.

"I got out of the service,” he said, "I was driving 109 miles to work each way. I hit a snowbank one night.”

His brother was already making a name for himself in the construction business in Naples.

 "I called my brother and asked if he had any work,” White said. "He said, 'I need a carpenter foreman. If you can be here by Monday morning, you’ve got a job.' I was here Monday morning, and that’s history. My first superintendent job was Louisiana Gas. I built a five story in Lely, and of course we built the Continental Inn down in Port Royal. And I’ve been here ever since.”

White certainly left his mark on Marco Island. As a superintendent, he was responsible for a number of well-known buildings on the island. His ascension to superintendent was another example of OJT.

“I built Florentine Gardens,” White said, "I built Eagle Cay, I built Caxambas Towers, I was assistant superintendent on Shipps Landing. I built Somerset. Smokehouse Harbor. I built all those office buildings for Leonard Llewellyn. Those little strip malls. We used to do all of his work. I did almost all my work on Marco. Slow times, I came to Naples. Our company was doing a lot of business on Marco. Most of our high-rise business was down there.”

White’s OJT in construction helped when he and Judy started their orchid business.

"Well, I built all this,” he said, motioning to the impressive collection of greenhouses on the Jade Orchids property. "I do all my own plumbing, all my own electrical, all my own water systems, everything. When you’re in charge of a whole project, there’s a lot of things you need to know. You’ve gotta know what the electrician knows, you’ve gotta know what the plumber knows, you gotta know what the air conditioning man knows, you’ve gotta know what the drywall man knows. Because you’re the boss over all of ‘em. So, you’ve gotta know it. It takes a few years to learn it - and thanks to people who are willing to help you. That’s the way you learn.”

White said the bulk of Jade Orchids’ clients are individuals.

"Mostly just people,” he said. "It’s normally the high-end people. The low-end people usually go to Home Depot or Lowes. We carry a more substantial inventory. You ought to see the quality of cars that come in here. We're the upper end. They wouldn’t buy an orchid at Home Depot if they had to,” he laughs. “Our quality is so much better. Those at the grocery store are basically in full bloom, so they’re not going to last you as long. Ours are just in bud. So, you’re going to get to enjoy the process of them opening and they’re going to last you a lot longer than the ones in the store. And we can tell you the kind of treatment ours got. They can’t. They can’t tell you how to grow it. We can.”

Education, customer service, selection and a depth of knowledge are some of the cornerstones Jade Orchid’s business is built on.

“When you’re watering these guys,” Judy White instructs a customer who is learning how to repot her orchid, "you’re only going to water really good once every two weeks. Soak ‘em good."

“Do I need to water right now?” asks customer Marge Bradfield.

“Give it a week,” Judy White suggests. "Then get on the two-week watering program. Your plants look good. They have a really good root system.”

“So, I’ve been a really good mom?” Bradfield asks.

“You’ve been a good mom,” White confirms, “you really have.”

Bradfield was a complete novice when she discovered Jade Orchids.

“I didn’t know anything about them,” Bradfield said, “I follow directions.”

She double checks with Judy.

"So, it’s a week, and then water?”

“Yep,” Judy said, “then you’re good every two weeks. And make sure you don’t bring them inside. Don’t put ‘em in the house. You can put them on the lanai. Because when we get some cold nights, they’ll start to spike."

As Bradfield walks to the cash register, Judy White grabs a cardboard box and quickly fashions it into an orchid holder.

“It’s a car seat for orchids,” she jokes.

“Did you learn anything?” Dave White asks Bradfield while manning the cash register. “Come on in here and I’ll give you a test.”

Bradfield laughs heartily.

“A test!” Bradfield said, “I don’t know, will I pass, Judy?”

“We want them to learn to grow them,” Dave White explains. “We pot in lava rock. Basically, because it has 17 different minerals in it. No soil. The reason they can grow orchids on all the Pacific islands is because it’s all lava rock. Lava rock will never rot. So, you don’t have to hurry up and repot because your soil’s rotting it. But we do have to repot every four to five years to get the salt out of it from the fertilizer. You can dip it and wash it and reuse the lava rock if you want to. But that’s too much trouble.”

Bradfield loves dealing with the Whites.

“As soon as I came in here and saw their volume of plants, I loved it,” Bradford said. "And they’ll share their knowledge with you if you just ask. It’s great. Anybody I know who comments on my orchids, I send them over here.”

A gentleman with a high-end Toyota sports car has both doors and his trunk lid open in anticipation of loading it up with the orchids he just purchased.

“If you can get that seat back as far as you can,” Judy White says, "I’m going to put them on the floorboard. And I promise I’ll get ‘em in there.”

“It’s times like this I wish I had a bigger car,” customer Stephen Gray jokes.

“There you go,” Judy said, “I promised. I got ‘em in there, you’ll have to get them out. Take ‘em out one at a time.”

“I’ve been buying from this outfit now for four to five years,” Gray said, “I originally started getting orchids from the Botanical Gardens, but they were getting out of the business. I bought these last year when we came down and they were still blooming in May, non-stop. That’s the quality. Whenever I can, I buy from them. They know what they’re doing. They only sell orchids. They’re not a flower shop with orchids on the side, picking them up from some wholesaler. These guys know what they’re looking at. Dave picked up one in here and found some spots on one of the leaves and said, ’No, that’s a fungus, you don’t want it.’ I’d have picked it. So, they’re very rigorously honest about it. One year I was a little dissatisfied because they got hit with so much business they pretty much ran out. This is a real class operation if you like orchids."

Orchids have a special power over people, it seems.

“Yeah, they do,” Gray said. Then, seeing Dave White, he passes on a compliment.

“Your wife is amazing,” Gray tells Dave, “I’d put them in the back here. Probably knocked all the buds off before I got ‘em back."

Boots Bradley, beautification committee member, and Chad Montgomery, director of green and grounds, arrive in Montgomery’s truck to pick up a large order of orchids for Naples Heritage.

Judy White guides a large cart of Orchids to the truck by herself at a brisk pace.

“She’s going fast so you can’t get a picture of her,” Dave jokes.

“They’ve been wonderful to work with,” Bradley said. “They’re very pleasant and very nice to work with.”

Judy gives the pair instructions on how to tie the orchids in the trees that line the entrance to Naples Heritage.

A large section of one of Jade Orchids’ greenhouses is set aside for their orchid boarding program.

“This is the boarding area where we board plants for people,” Dave White said. "They’ll be coming back. Their plants are not put in with our plants. We’ve been doing this ever since we’ve been in business. It’s $2.50 a month per plant. We do quite a few. They board ‘em with us, we repot ‘em, so when they get back all they have to do is enjoy them. And believe it or not it’s a challenge. Some of ‘em come in three-quarters of the way dead and we have to bring them back to life,” he laughs. "Orchids are very tough. You can throw ‘em on the ground and it might be a year or year and a half before they start growing. The worst thing you can do to an orchid is over-water ‘em. Their roots are fleshy. If you over-water ‘em it rots ‘em. But if you’ve got ‘em in trouble - say your leaves are in trouble, dehydrating, overwater and under watering are the same symptom. You have to pull it out and check the roots. If the roots are real nice and happy, you’re probably under-watering a little bit. But even if they’re totally rotten they will come back.”

Dave White figures they have between 100 to 200 different varieties of orchids. He says he doesn’t have a favorite.

“Nah, I like ‘em all,” he says with a satisfied smile. "That’s why I’m still doing it. When my wife started doing this, I didn’t give a dang about orchids. It was just a plant. But when we started going to South America, collecting them, climbing trees - of course that was back in my young and irresponsible youth. That was right up my alley, climbing up a tree, and taking the plant out of it. But when you’re collecting, you only take the front part of it. You don’t take it all. If you leave a little piece, it’ll grow back.”

White says orchids will last forever.

 "An orchid will live forever as long as you don’t kill it,” he said. "Orchids, they believe, came through the Ice Age. Because the seeds are encrusted. Orchids were the hobby of kings. They were the only ones who could send people around the world to collect them.”

White says there are some rules of thumb with orchids.

• "A good rule of thumb is,” he said, "the wider the leaf, less light. The narrower the leaf, more light. Because a wide leaf has more area to photosynthesize than a narrow leaf. So that’s why you see philodendron back in the woods. And out here you see grass and weeds. These are narrow leaf; those are wide leaf. They don’t need as much light. Some plants you can grow in an elevator lobby, that’s all the light they need.”

• "The way you tell an orchid from any other flower is that every other flower has a stamen. An orchid does not have a stamen. An orchid has a column. And the pollen is way back up underneath.”

• "Cold is one of the biggest things that will kill orchids, because they’re basically all water. That’s the reason cats will scratch them, to get the water. So, you have to be careful when it gets cold because they’ll freeze. I’ve got heaters. Big gas heaters.”

• "Orchids are the largest plant family there is. It’s the largest pot plant family in the world. What happens, a lot of doctors recommend them for therapy because they’re such slow growers. Some, from the time they’re seeded to the time they bloom, is 12 to 14 years. We’ve had some of them take 20 years before they bloom for the first time. It’s therapeutic because it’s watching something progress slowly.”

• "If you go in a nursery, if the growers are doing it right, if you look at the tag, if it’s lower case, it’s a species. Upper case it’s a hybrid. That’s how you tell the difference between jungle grown and hybrid.”

Like anything in life, the Whites don’t plan to operate Jade Orchids forever.

“I’m 80,” Dave White said solemnly. "Anybody comes with the right money’s got it. It’s 3.2 acres. Turnkey business. Our reputation, the name and all. Never had a bad mark anywhere. We pay for everything when it comes in. Thataway, we don’t owe nobody. We decided just me and the wife would do it as a mom-and-pop operation.”

But for now, Dave says he’s still learning about orchids.

“I learn something new about orchids every day,” he said. "Well, my dad always told me, ‘Son, if you don’t learn something every day, you ain’t doing nothin.’"

White admits that he learned how to make money better than his hard-working dad did.

“Yeah, quite a bit," he said with a smile.