What you know about gardening would fit on the back of a postage stamp my mother said.

I always thought I had the kiss of death where plants were concerned. A work colleague gave me a beautiful pot plant to celebrate a house warming. Within weeks it was dead.

Other pot plants I owned over the years succumbed to a similar fate regardless of how much I watered them.

It was when I inherited three orchids from my mother that things changed.

My mother suffered a major stroke, which left her with dementia and other serious health problems.

She was incapable of looking after her orchids, which had been her pride and joy.

At first it was a hassle to be left looking after them with all the other things I had to deal with.

The orchids were left to fend for themselves for months.

Then one day I was at a garden centre when I spotted a beautiful purple and white Phalaenopsis orchid.

I instantly fell in love. I just had to have that orchid. After a long conversation with the staff I took it home and took loving care of it.

That loving care then extended to the other three orchids I already owned but which had languished until now.

Once a week I would religiously water them under the tap for a couple of minutes before allowing them to drain off for the rest of the day.

I graduated to feeding them with specialized orchid spray every few days and even took to spraying them twice a day with water.

It was not long before I realised that my local supermarket sold orchids for a fraction of the price charged by the garden centre.

Every week I started snapping up bargain price orchids, all Phalaenopsis but of the most amazing colours – yellows with pink centres, whites with pink, deep purples, lime greens and mini orchids.

I now own 17 Phalaenopsis orchids which crowd the windowsills of my small northern semi-detached home.

There is something almost addictive about orchids.

Maybe I did inherit my mother’s green thumb after all.