Suffering "Wild" orchid removal ethical or not?

[Oclover]

I recently visited a bungalow house in the hilltops around where I live, and within the cleanly landscaped compound I stumbled upon a couple of miniature "wild" orchids on a 2 foot shrub/bush.

One was in pretty bad condition, covered in scale with sun burnt leaves but the other was ok, both had dried up roots as it's been horribly hot due to the heat wave that's been hitting us over the past 3 months. It's very obvious that the plants are very young and were struggling, my guess is that they weren't more then a year old.

So, with the knowledge that they will be chopped off when the gardeners cut back all the greenery within the compound and seeing that they were on thier last leg anyway, I could not leave them there to die, so I carefully removed them. I have now mounted them onto driftwood and they seem to be doing fine.

I honestly would have left them there if they were in the jungle but it was obvious they wouldn't be there the following year.

So my question is; is it still considered unethical to have removed them? I know the law here and it doesn't apply to private properties, so I've not broken any laws, but I still feel crappy as I've had horrible backlash from members from another forum, parcially my fault as I did not fully explain and it did seemed as though I just took them becuase they were "wild", but in actual fact weren't taken from the wild.

I kindly ask that everyone please be polite with responding, I've honestly had enough guilt and dont need to be lectured and hounded again, I just need to know if what I did was wrong and if I should have instead left them there to die.