Roy Neale was working in animal health for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Auckland when he spied a box of Cymbidium orchid flowers on a colleague’s desk and told her, once he found out what the flowers were, that he was going to breed the plants – but as he knew nothing about horticulture, her reaction was less than encouraging.

However, Roy, now 88, was adamant that he wanted a change in his life and on January 1, 1980 went fulltime into Cymbidium orchids, having agreed with Fred Burke of Whakatane, that he would become the Auckland agent for Burke’s Orchids. “I knew nothing about them and I had none,” Roy says, but his knowledge of how to grow good grass helped, and after about 5 years he took over the breeding for Burke’s Orchids.

“Never at any stage did I intend to get involved in clubs – and vowed I would never take on any position within a club.”

Roy, a well-known figure in the world of hobby orchidists, did indeed join clubs, the first being Auckland Orchid Club (now the Waitakere club) in 1985 and soon after the NZOS, and North Shore society. And he has also been an office-holder – including three separate terms as president of Waitakere, and at national level.

He joined the OCNZ Executive in 2002, becoming vice-president in 2006, president in 2009 and immediate past president in 2012, standing down a year later. It was during his time with the OCNZ that he also became an accredited OCNZ judge.

Roy’s first experience of showing plants came in 1988 when he was asked if he had anything for an Auckland club show – a big orchid show was taking place in Sydney to mark Australia’s bicentenary and a good number of Auckland growers were committed to that.

“So they had a shortage of plants,” Roy says, “and they knew I was growing a reasonable number.” He told those inquiring to go to the shed and take the plants they wanted. “Well, the boxes came back with trophies and certificates in amongst the plants.

“Three weeks later there was an NZOS show and I thought if these plants were good enough the first time, let’s try again and this time I’ll do it myself – and again there were trophies and certificates. I thought this was a bit of all right.”

Roy firmly believes clubs are the lifeblood of the orchid hobby, however, his initial membership had him puzzled. “I thought clubs were where you went to learn to grow orchids,” he says, “but not once in 3 years did I hear how to grow these plants, just how others were growing them.” It might be a fine distinction but it’s one that sticks with Roy even today.

He was living in Hobsonville when he met Lee, forming Leroy Orchids in 1995, before marrying in 1999. “She wanted somewhere for her 200 Odonts and I had plenty of space so that’s how we got together. I had nothing but Cymbidiums when I met Lee.

“We started selling plants in about 1996,” Roy says, “and it’s all Lee’s fault.” A founder member of Avondale market, Lee wondered why Roy was burning reject plants when he could be selling them. “The people who buy at markets just want a nice flower, they don’t care about the breeding ins and out,” Lee says.

Roy is candid about the financial success of his Cymbidium business – mostly it never paid and Lee worked off the property to keep them afloat. “I was a breeder, not a grower, so one issue was that every spike that came out was different and I couldn’t fill cut-flower orders.” This was solved when Lars Larsen, another Auckland grower, began cloning plants for them.

And every so often, a guardian angel in the form of a Colombian buyer, appeared and bought huge numbers of Roy’s flasks. The first time he contacted them though, the couple were somewhat suspicious. “It sounded too good to be true, but he turned out to be kosher and we had some major orders from him, almost always when we needed it the most.”

With his Hobsonville land needed for roading, and a sense that there might be something else in orchids for him, Roy moved to Whenuapai in 2008, a property that went on the market in early 2024 as Leroy Orchids transitions to a growing and showing partnership.

“It was Lee’s dream to grow Cattleyas and I started playing around with a few. There was a big shed on the property – the Cymbidiums hated it, but the other genera liked it and did well. It was an easy decision in the end and we wished we’d done it years ago. For one thing, we started to make money, and Lee is probably now the most knowledgable Cattleya person in the country.”

As well as taking them around New Zealand, the couple’s orchid knowledge has also seen them at orchid shows overseas, with Roy speaking at some overseas orchid events. “I put ‘orchid grower’ on my landing forms,” Lee says, “but Roy always puts ‘orchid breeder’ and that tells you a lot about us.”

The couple aren’t ending their association with orchids and Lee quips that the only real argument about downsizing their lives is how many orchids they are each allowed to keep.

“I will miss talking to people at the shows,” Roy says about no longer having a sales stand. “We’d often see the same people year after year, partly because some of them were killing their orchids with kindness, an easy thing to do, and came back for more.”

Roy believes orchid judges should be identified at shows, as he was in his bird-judging days, with a rosette so visitors can ask questions. “As a judge of anything you have to be answerable to the public.”

He’d also like to see a class for first-flowering seedlings at more shows and for it to be the most important class in the show. “These plants are the future and we should be encouraging people to breed new orchids by showing them that we honour the plants and their efforts.”

Roy and Lee received the John Easton Award in 2015 for their services to the hobby of orchid growing, the citation noting that one of their greatest achievements was a Gold award at the 2007 Ellerslie Flower Show for their display, as well as the Supreme Horticultural Award. In 2017 Roy received OCNZ’s highest recognition, the Award of Honour, and in 2018 Leroy Orchids’ Fredclarkeara After Dark ‘Leroy’ won the Cultural Award of the Year. But the 2023 honour of having an orchid genus named for them by the Royal Horticulture Society – Nealeara, from their own breeding – was the best possible way to end his career.

“My wish is for everyone to have the same enjoyment from orchids as I’ve had,” Roy says, “and then you’d have some pretty happy people out there.”     

• Posted January 2024