Our speakers in August were the Aizlewoods from the Gold Coast region of eastern Australia. They are great enthusiasts for the growing of bromeliads and have a great deal of experience that they shared with us.
Greg and Narelle Aizlewood reside in a small fishing village located on the coast midway between the Gold Coast and Brisbane in Queensland. The climate is described as sub-tropical with temperatures ranging from a minimum of 5C degrees during Winter to a 35C degrees maximum in summer. They have been growing bromeliads since 1985 and are in the process of trying to down size their collection. They enjoy travelling to the U.S.A. to attend the World Bromeliad Conferences and have only missed one conference since their first to San Diego in 2006.
Greg and Narelle have travelled extensively in South America to Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Ecuador. Greg has been known to collect tillandsia seeds on most of those trips and has a very interesting tillandsia collection, a lot of which has been grown from seed. Greg’s love of bromeliads originally started with billbergias and he has registered quite a few billbergias hybrids. Narelle enjoys working with the softer leaved bromeliads, and together they have a good collection of John Arden’s hybrids. John sent seeds to Greg some years ago and we are just now getting to see the results of those seed growing ventures, crosses that John never lived to see.