June is the worst time of year to plant anything.

How were you watering them?

Planted in hole two foot wide and three foot deep with about 50/50 soil to compost with some perlite mixed in too. Planting holes should be no deeper than the root ball, and not heavily amended.

Dig it wide and shallow, fill it with water, let that soak in, fill it again and then plant the trees. Refill with native dirt.

Ditto, very difficult time to plant. Late Sept. to early Oct is good.
Also ditto do NOT mix amendment into your hole. Back fill with native soil and use amendments as a mulch on the surface.
Be sure you don't water log the tree as water will tend to hold in the hole you dug like a pot.

Beautiful trees, I have 5 I started from seed.
good luck!

Thanks guys for all your input. I knew it would be very, very risky planting in June. Took a gamble and lost. :)

All the information I got and used on planting my Honk Kong Orchid trees I got from Phoenix tropicals website. Looks like it says quite the opposite of what other people here say on planting Orchid trees. Seems to me the guy running the site really knows what he's talking about. Anybody else use that site for plant information?

Sorry to hear your misfortune - Blakeana's are tough to transplant any time of year - our clay soil can be too wet holding for them and our tap water ( seldom fresh from the dam - mostly reclaimed ground water with 2wice the chemicals to make safe ) is too salty - especially if your trees came from Florida - there is someone selling Blakeana seeds ???? online - but how can you sell seeds from a sterile plant ???
I have tried now 2 seasons to work with Blakeana's - misfortune always in the end - I will keep trying but think is better to try transplanting in early fall or early spring - less water than more as over watering with our clay soil seems to be the real killer : cheers and good luck

kccav, yes one would hope the "professional" advice on a web site would be the best and good and accurate. But in this case, the Phoenix tropicals website is behind the times. Here is another source. The University of California did a lot of work and research on planting methods about 10 years ago or so, and this is what they recomend. My own personal experience and results concur with the UC findings.

http://groups.ucanr.org/mgfresno/Landscape_Tree_Info/

http://groups.ucanr.org/mgfresno/files/16798.pdf

gobi there is one variety that is sterile. The ones I have produce prolific flowers followed by pods with lots of seeds. The pods area actually quite attractive too, at least they are to me.

Thank you for the input gobi and softmentor. I bookmarked the two webpages you gave and will now use the advice on the U C sites. What I'm noticing is the xBlakeana is very sensitive to transplanting more so than the purpurea and variegata. Yes I bought the trees from TT in Florida. Will plant them again in early fall.