by Jess McCuan   .   photos by Brent Fleury

Irene Murray caught a glimpse of her first orchid in a Moscow subway station in 1969. In that moment, two of her great loves converged. She would return to Russia more than 30 times in her life. And working with orchids over the years, she has come to see them as something of a unifying force, a flower so prolific and perennially intriguing that it brings together curious flower-growers everywhere. “You could live and learn and work your whole life in orchids and never finish up with them,” Murray says. “People all over the world are interested in orchids. They’re interesting people. They have wide visions of the world and life.”

Murray’s mother was a Russian transplant who married an American and raised Irene on a farm outside New Orleans. She was home-schooled by her Russian grandmother and later studied Spanish and French in college (and got a master’s degree in political science, too). Today she speaks both Russian and Spanish fluently. Her husband Mike Richardson, a part-time executive director for the Asheville tech promotion group Meet The Geeks, says that anywhere she goes, Irene is a magnet for Russians. In airports, grocery stores, at public events, she strikes up conversations with fellow Russian speakers, and both parties are usually so pleased to find each other that they can get caught up talking for an hour. “Even my air conditioning man is Ukrainian,” Irene says. “It comes in handy.” 

Her language skills served her well in her unusual career. It began in the late ‘60s when she was part of a Russian cultural exchange program that set up educational exhibits in Leningrad, Kiev, Moscow and elsewhere. From 1970 to ’74, she worked for Voice of America, an official government radio station. She’s proud to report that her first job at VOA was to bring country music to Russia. She interviewed major Nashville country stars of the day—Chet Atkins, Marty Robbins and Dolly Parton—and then translated the interviews, dubbed in music and broadcast it to listeners in the former Soviet Union. 

By the ‘70s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture started sending teams of diplomats and specialists like Murray to Russia to study agriculture. The teams ran joint research projects and exchanged critical information, and though Murray was in her 20s—often the only woman in a room with male scientists and officials—her farm upbringing and language skills were invaluable. On any given day in a three-week tour, she might translate or review documents on topics ranging from crop yields and chicken prices to growing wheat and soybeans in permafrost. 

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in late 1979, with some Afghan groups eventually drawing U.S. support, her diplomatic Russia missions were all but over. Murray moved  to Mississippi, then to Chicago, where she worked for the University of Chicago interviewing recent Russian immigrants. In the mid-1990s, she used her language skills to facilitate research projects for a fiber optic cable project in Siberia. 

Ever the ardent Russophile, Murray grew weary of the 10-hour flights. “At 50, I didn’t know what to do with myself and the jet lag was getting to me,” she says. By the late ‘90s she was living in Homestead, Florida, and decided to “retire herself.” And then, at 53, she met retired Air Force colonel Mike Richardson, who introduced her—or rather, reintroduced her—to her second career: growing orchids.

In Homestead, the couple happened to live a few blocks from R.F. Orchids, one of the most famous orchid nurseries in the world. The company, with annual revenues of more than $1 million, makes an appearance in New Yorker writer Susan Orlean’s 1998 book The Orchid Thief. Orlean described R.F.’s owner, Robert Fuchs, whose father and grandfather both grew orchids, as “the king of the orchids.” Murray learned from Fuchs but also bought every orchid book and went to every class she could find. Then she started an orchid arrangement business, Curb Appeal, shipping orchid baskets to hospitals, businesses and newcomers in the Miami-Dade area. 

Most orchid-growing couples will tell you that, in every relationship, one spouse is the orchid fanatic, the other the enabler. Richardson, the enabler, likes to joke that getting Irene interested in orchids was the most expensive mistake of his life. The couple moved to Arden two years ago, and in the basement of their home is a blazing hothouse that pumps out nearly 10,000 foot-candles of light to more than 100 exotic plants. There are draping pothos plants and peace lilies and bright spiky crotons, but the main attractions are, of course, the orchids. The heat lamps light up cascading shelves of yellow, brown and violet orchids in various shapes and sizes—some spider-like, some ghost-like, some with petals that fan out like ladies’ ball gowns and with roots like ancient worms. Even in a relatively dry climate like Western North Carolina’s (orchids like tropical conditions), Murray is able, through careful watering, light and food, to cultivate the most delicate of orchids. Take the large, Vanda, for example, which can have deep blue-purple petals. “People said I couldn’t flower a Vanda here, but I flowered two,” she says. 

Even if it’s not the orchid-growing mecca that Homestead was, Murray was pleased to find that interest in orchids around Asheville is flourishing. She’s a member of the Western North Carolina Orchid Society, which has nearly 100 members, participates in orchid shows throughout the year and hosts one large show at the North Carolina Arboretum in March. She’s starting up a new version of her orchid arrangement business, The Orchid Connection, adding a new twist—orchid rental. 

Some may see orchid cultivation as tedious or complex. Murray says it’s easier than you think. She also believes it’s a good way to make friends. She finds orchid growers to be generous with information and exuberant about their plants, happy to get more and more people involved. For her part, disappearing into her basement hothouse makes her feel better nearly every day. It’s warm, humid and full of vibrant living creatures who don’t mind if she occasionally talks to them. “All it takes is five cats, two dogs and 100 orchids,” she says. “Life is pretty good.”  

For more information about Irene Murray’s The Orchid Connection, call 828-681-1627.