The first tool for the internet we are in the process of building is WaterlilyDatabase.com  a search-able online tool of waterlilies from around the world. Reaching out to international friends first like Primlarpwe have an extensive list in English now of most Thai waterlilies with photos and some with video. Séverine Lyssens-Danneboom is helping organize the German, Belgium, and other European waterlilies.

We also have many waterlilies from China and Belgium of all places. We do have plenty of other waterlilies from North America and Europe as well as species. 650 plants to start with and over 1400 photos. We also feature articles on hybridizers and gardens from around the world.

It is a true work of love as everyone is donating time to the project, over 30 contributors from around the world on 6 continents to date! This database search can also be added to empty webpages on your site!

Originally a seedling of N. ‘Attraction’, from Perry Slocum, Perry sold about 100 seedlings to Brad McLane around the year 2000. Brad in turn sold many of the seedlings to Randy during a time there was a slight shortage of Attraction. According to Randy this is when he grew out and found N. ‘Hidden Violet’. I was anxious to try one of these nifty red hardy lilies. The name Hidden Violet refers to the sheen on the plant when it is held up to the light you see a sheen of violet around the edge of the flowers.

The petal count is low but the unique star flower is interesting. After growing these plants for the past few summers and also seeing it on display in San Angelo I would call this a not so good bloomer. I usually had one bloom per day this summer in multiple pots with multiple crowns. Also for some reason the rhizomes do not seem to enjoy being transplanted like other hardy lilies. I am not sure this is an excellent choice for a market lily however it is unique and something new and fun I enjoyed trying the past few years.

Randy McDonald is an incredible waterlily Hybridizer from California and has an extensive hybrid stock we will dive into soon, many of which are interesting heavy blooming tropical plants.

Texas Dawn has been an incredible waterlily for nearly 30 years, the wonderful yellow flowers on this hardy lily are held high above the water and blooms in profusion. Hybridizers also enjoy working with the cultivar by Ken Landon. Here are some videos from Ken Landon, Drew Darby, and Tim Davis.

Ken Landon

Drew Darby

Tim Davis

Texas Dawn waterlilies are available for purchase here.

Here is just a peek at what Mike will be bringing to market in the next 2-3 years. Also our friends in Florida have followed in the footsteps of Pairat Songpanich and Mike Giles with more urple hardy waterlilies. Both the blue and purple hardy lilies have been slow too reproduce so they will probably become available 1 or 2 years more slowly than a normal hardy lily. Many of the pink and red lilies multiply faster and could be available sooner.

Mike also has some lilies with blooms nearly the size of a gallon container and in cool weather stay open 6 to 12 days.

More information coming here soon and more waterlilies coming to Pond Megastore.

We have Emily Grant Hutchings. One of George Prings most incredible night blooming waterlilies, this video though not narrated will stun you! Plant night bloomers only after water is well into the 70s constantly or you will put them to sleep for many weeks. They multiply easily so keeping some over the winter as tubers is no problem if you have watched our tuber storage videos from Ken Landon. Emily Grant Hutchings is pink with green pads, flowers open around dusk and stay open well into the next morning ot even noon if it is overcast.

Next, James Brydon is a red moderate to heavy blooming small to medium waterlily. The shape of the flowers is very pretty and this like most reds does well where summer temperatures are not too hot. If your average high in summer is above 92 degrees then red hardy waterlilies are to be avoided as they tend to turn black and get a cooked appearance after opening.

Finally we have Wood’s Blue Goddess, a favorite large blue waterlily created by Jack Wood in 1989. Flowers stand high above the water and the pads are green. The flowers are moderate to heavy depending on pot size and fertilizer.

Beginning in 2012 PondMegastore.com will have exclusive sales rights to the first of Mike Giles hardy waterlilies hybrids. Myra, Sunfire, Fairy Skirt, Yellow Giant, and Hunneycup. In 2013 as long as production goes well we will then bring you the first Purple and Blue hardy waterlilies from Mike Giles.

More Soon….
Zac – water-garden-blog.com / http://www.PondMegastore.com

Let us know what you think – if you have questions – all these pond plants and waterlilies are available to buy (blooming size) at http://www.PondMegastore.com  

We should have new videos up and some big new features in the next 3-5 weeks. The biggest announcements in 4 years or more, some waterlilies we know you have never seen before. And that is how I will end this post with you wondering what is about to show up here.

Miami Rose:

“Miami Rose Growing Pool” waterlilies growing in the southern nursery. A full star shape with more than 50 petals when mature.

The foliage is uniquely mottled and is a vigorous bloomer. Miami Rose waterlily is truly one of the all time favorites and is very popular. For sale now at http://www.pondmegastore.com/

Clyde Ikins:

Peony shaped peach blossoms are held well above beautifully slightly mottled to green leaves with age. One of the most prolific blooming hardy lilies.

Other hardy prolific bloomers include Texas Dawn, Colorado, Perrys Baby Red, Helvola, Mangkala Ubol, Moondance, Laydekeri Fugens, Laydekeri Lilacia, Bernice Ikins, Joanne Pring, and more.

Clyde Ikins is available as a full grown adult blooming plant at http://www.PondMegastore.com

Crystal: Crystal is a very heavily blooming white waterlily.

“Crystal” waterlilies growing in the southern nursery. Crystal is a great white… waterlily – an excellent bloomer and will fit in most any size water garden or pond.

This waterlily has the added benefit of being viviparous, plantlets form on the pads.

This waterliy is readily available now and should be into the summer months at
http://www.pondmegastore.com/ for delivery to homes or garden centers.

seem more at http://www.PondMegastore.com 

1. Do you have the right size container?A two gallon container is pretty standard for medium water gardens but most lilies would like more space. Hardy lilies like a lot of horizontal room, consider a 12-20″ across if you don’t want to re-pot them every year, it does not need to be deep, something the size of a sturdy dishpan is great or a black colored kitty litter pan will last a couple years. A tropical waterlily can enjoy a pot 3-20 gallons in size. Lots of soil and fertilizer to boot.  Let us take a look at a few plants,

a new variety available for the first time in 2011 is Ken Landon’s ‘Rhapsody In White” (video below) Tim Davis sent me a tuber last summer after I fell in love with it at the International Waterlily Collection and is now probably my favorite star waterlily (flavovirens hybrid). It is very cold tolerant, possibly more so than some viviparous tropical waterlilies and can survive winters with ice on the pond. Chocolate pads surround a bouquet of wonderful white flowers standing high above the surface. Six blooms per day is not uncommon and plant 2 or more in a large container and you can have over a dozen flowers each morning.

Click on Video below to Play in HD

2. During the growing season waterlilies need fertilizer (and please plant them in SOIL). Though you can plant these plants in kitty litter trays don’t buy overpriced cat litter sold as aquatic plant medium (black kitty litter trays are preferable but after 2 weeks any dark color will be hidden by the pond film). Real soil, a heavy clay/topsoil or loam is perfect (potting soil is light and will float, avoid that as it is disaster).  If you add a good fertilizer like Ken Landon’s waterlily fertilizer or osmocote 180 day granulars (or both) to the soil you may not have to fertilze again all season. In the south where growing season are longer you can start with granular and add pond tabs the second half of the season if your fertilizer begins to run out.

In June 2010 I visited Nelson’s Water Garden in Texas where you can see how big lilypads and flowers actually can get when you feed them, this is Foxfire which had been growing in the pond for a couple months. Mike Swize puts his hand on a pad to show the relationship in size. Note I also grew fozfire and kept with less fertilzier in a smaller pot can keept the plant blooming just as much but stays about 1/3rd the size of this giant.

Click on Video below to Play in HD

3. Sunshine and warm weather. Waterlilies actively grow when water temps are in the mid to high 60s and like lots of direct sunlight. Full shade is not helpful for blooming even on shade tolerant plants. Planting your plants when its still early is not great either. Cold water can make tropical waterlilies go to sleep. Just because it was 82 degrees yesterday does not make it good planting weather if the bottom of your pond is 55. You want low temps to be nothing below 55 or so for 2 weeks straight before getting the plants in the pond from actively growing in waters elsewhere. You can plant dormant plants in water as cool as 45 just dont expect them to grow much until warmer weather.

Here is a look at hardy Helvola after a few week in the sun in a 20″ wide container. Each flower is only about 2″ across as this is a hardy dwarf waterlily.

Click on Video below to Play in HD

All three of the waterlilies shown are available at www.PondMegastore.com

The first is N. Helvola. A wonderful dwarf variety. Dwarf waterlilies should not be planted too deep, they can do just fine from a few inches to close to two feet deep. The containers I could tell you can be smaller than the small, medium, and large lilies however remember that all hardy waterlilies have rhizomes and grow across the top of your container of soil so width is more important than depth.

Helvola is a yellow dwarf waterlily that can overwinter in most of the United States where the pond wont freeze to the depth of the root. Zones 4 and higher should be fine. If you have a small deicer for your fish they should survive in zone 3 as well. Helvola is an excellent bloomer with yellow blossoms on the waters surface sitting on top of the green lilypads. If fertilized well and kept in sun you should have many blooms every day of the summer until frost. See the video of a well planted and fertilized Helvola below. These three pond plants and over 70 more hardy waterlilies are available at Pond Megastore.

Andreana is a small burnt red to almost orange small waterlily. Slightly larger than dwarfs like helvola. Similar lighting and planting requirements. I should mention at dollar stores this spring I found small black trays for dish-washing which were of course shallow but wide and I thought, heck that’s twice the width of my pots and not as deep. Perfect since they were black though most any color would get discolored by algae film under water and would be covered by lilypads in a week or two. Also the trays have grips on the sides which make them easy to pull up or set down. Being so shallow the dirt wouldn’t make the trays heavy for any person of any age.

In the video below Andreana had begun to close a little as it was late afternoon and about 95 degrees in July so imagine them slightly more open. This plant is hardy and will survive well throughout the United States year after year. Fertilize until late summer and repot as needed when the growing container becomes overgrown to encourage more blooms.

Gloriosa is a nice compact to medium red waterlily with 3-5″ blooms. Developed back in 1896 it has been a proven winner for more than a century. Growing conditions are again similar, I would plant in at least a 2 gallon container or larger. If using fertilizer tablets add 3-5 per month for great blooms or a summer long granular fertilizer like Ken Landon fertilizer. Again this video was taken in late afternoon so they have begun to close for the day but this is a great example of how healthy happy waterlilies grow.

All hardy pond plants and waterlilies available at http://www.PondMegastore.com

Grow easily in zones 3-8. It will also grow in zones 9-11 but may burn a little in deep summer and under heavy fertilizer. I would suggest a pot 3 gallons or more in size (at least 10″ across and 14″ or more is even better.

For Dates visit the IWGS website.

With the click of a mouse, I saw it was true. From this day forward, Hardy Waterlilies will NEVER again stand as a slightly less impressive plant in the shadows of amazing vibrant tropical waterlilies. “Wanvisa” has arrived! I know what you are thinking >>>insert photo here<<<<. I do want you to come back and check for more news and it will eventually show up here along with a flood of others.

On its way to the international waterlily collection in San Angelo, my buddy is currently growing the AMAZING waterlily. Developed by Mr. Nopchai Chansilpa of Thailand. The plant will be on display in San Angelo Texas from July through Lilyfest in September. Nopchai will be present at San Angelo this fall if you would like to meet him. Likely the first peak presentation will be around the July 3 / 4th time this summer.

Other inside information straight from Ken Landon himself via Tim Davis tells a story of massive planting and work underway in San Angelo. The pools are filling with more lilies each day and the young Victoria’s I believe have been added. Ken has a small staff of some great ladies helping him and has just finished working with kids volunteering before summer break. From years past the site looks something like this…

Water-Garden-Blog is staying on top of the many many announcements coming from the San Angelo IWC and will have reports coming all summer long as we anticipate the aquatic event of the Decade.

Many more hybrid waterlilies, interviews, and important topics like the White List are being worked on.

The video is great in 720 High Definition.

This video is for use by Tim Davis, Water-Garden-Blog, IWGS, and International Waterlily Collection of San Angelo. Sharing unedited on Facebook or Twitter is OK.

Tim Davis is a hobbyist water gardener and waterlily hybridizer. When he can, he volunteers to help Ken Landon at the International Waterlily Collection (IWC) in San Angelo, Texas. One of his first hybrids is named Debbie Ann after his wife. In his free time he enjoys gathering data on waterlilies and hybridizers, running the IWC San Angelo website and is also webmaster for the International Waterlily and Water Garden Society as well as the current Journal Editor.  He has a website (here) where he will sell some of his plants online in the summer and is a strong advocate of Ken Landon Fertilizer and Pond Tabs Fertilizer. In the future you will see Tim gets 5-10 blooms (sometimes more) per day off of single plants in relatively small containers.

   Deep red waterlilies like, Nymphaea Almost Black (left), Nymphaea Black Princess, and Nymphaea Burgundy Princess (photo right) all perform well as flowers up above the Mason Dixon line. The deeper the Red the more sun bleaching that occurs and if you live really far south like my friend Tim Davis, the dark reds are almost flammable and perform poorly in the strong southern sun. I love this.

Why? Because the south gets to enjoy so many tropical water lilies for almost twice the growing season of the north, it is nice to have something easier for us. Now you can grow red water lilies in the south, just remember that there are steps to avoid totally burning your deep reds. If you have an area of the pond that might get a few hours of shade that might be a good trial area for the deep red though the harsh summer mid-afternoon sun will be directly overhead. 

The Almost Black water lily is not the most productive waterlily in terms of blooms but has nice color and can be a large lily when potted and fertilized correctly. The Black Princess is somewhat less large and has deep merlot coloration. The burgundy princess is a small lily compared to the others with a more compact spread, pad, and flower.

Lori Shontz
The Penn Stater magazine

— At first, all George Griffith wanted was a pond. Just a little one, somewhere in a corner of his family’s land in western Pennsylvania. 

After getting permission to dig one, he saved his money to buy a couple of goldfish to live there.

After a couple of weeks, the fish died. So Griffith – only 8 years old – began studying to find out why, and within a couple of years he was not only breeding his own goldfish, but earning money by selling them to five-and-dime stores, including the one where he had purchased his first pair.

That was only the beginning. Goldfish led to guppies. Turtles. Canaries. Myna birds. Orchids. And water lilies. Griffith paid his Penn State tuition with profits from George’s Aquatic Gardens and Pet Supplies, which made him an important guy in some corners of campus.

The Daily Collegian noted in a 1956 article that Griffith, a 1956 PSU graduate, sold “30,000 goldfish a year” and added “The collegian pastime of swallowing goldfish by fraternity pledges has also boosted his sales.”

The goldfish paid the bills, but they were never his true love and focus.

That was the pond. Griffith has spent his life expanding on that original water garden, and he now has more than 30 lily ponds on his 80-acre property, a former potato farm along a mountain road outside of Ligonier.

“There’s just something magic about a water lily,” Griffith said.

“They’re the diamonds of the water.”

And he doesn’t have just any old water lilies; he develops his own. 

Griffith has hybridized hundreds of them over the years and the dozen or so he has deemed worthy to propagate are part of his water garden. He also has a lotus that’s a direct descendent of a plant more than 2,000 years old.

No, Griffith never does anything halfway. “I love too many things,” he said. “I get too excited.”

Plenty of people are slowing down at his age, 77. But Griffith is still running The Flower Barn, the business in Westmont he owns with his partner, Thomas O’Brien.

That’s an uphill battle sometimes, he said, because of the increasingly popular phrase in death notices, “in lieu of flowers.”

That cuts into profits, but Griffith thinks there’s a bigger cost to society as a whole. 

He explained, “Flowers forever have been an expression of all those things we cannot express as we would like to.”

Griffith has been expressing himself with flowers since he cornered the market on black orchids (which are white orchids dyed) when they were popular in the 1950s. He then moved on to designing flower arrangements for gala events all over western Pennsylvania and beyond

– even at the White House and about

17 states.

“He’s very precise – a perfectionist,” said Donald Miller, a former art and architecture critic for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. 

He has attended dozens of galas marked by Griffith’s distinctive style. “And frankly, that’s what they best do: Make every effort to do it right.”

O’Brien put it this way: “You cannot pull anything over his eyes. From the bookkeeper on down, he is one step ahead of everyone.”

Griffith was only a junior in college when he made his first botanical splash. When word came that President Dwight D. Eisenhower would give the Penn State commencement speech in 1955, Griffith was asked to put together a floral display.

He went big, floating 2,000 water lilies on the pond in front of the president’s home (now part of the Hintz Family Alumni Center). And because the blue and purple tropical water lilies he wanted didn’t bloom so early in Pennsylvania, he had them shipped from Florida.

Life magazine published a photo of Eisenhower and his brother, Penn State President Milton Eisenhower, posing by the flowers.

That’s how Griffith came to have a lotus plant with an ancient legacy. It came from a seed found at the bottom of a Manchurian lake; initial carbon dating showed it to be at least 2,000 years old, and he said it is among the oldest seeds to ever be germinated.

The lotus was growing in Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in a rough neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and Griffith learned that children were vandalizing the garden. So he asked Milton Eisenhower for help, and Eisenhower enabled him to get a “division” of the rare lotus, which he is still growing.

Griffith’s connection in D.C. grew. In 1981, he and O’Brien decorated the White House for a state dinner honoring the prime minister of Japan. Nancy Reagan, who was famous for requesting specific flowers, regardless of whether they were in season, wanted water lilies. 

Those flowers were blooming, but there was still a problem – they bloom only during the day, and the dinner was at night.

Griffith solved the problem by injecting the floral equivalent of muscle relaxants into the stomata, or base, of the cut water lilies. (He still laughs at the fact that he was “drugging” the flowers as the White House mounted its “War on Drugs.”) But the flowers stayed open, the first lady was pleased, and Griffith and O’Brien have continued to do occasional displays for the White House ever since.

Closer to home, Griffith has specialized in creating spectacular spaces for parties and museums, including for the openings of Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall and the Hunt Botanical Library at Carnegie Mellon.

Miller particularily remembers a gala at the Carnegie Museum of Art for an exhibit of French decorative panels the museum obtained from the ocean liner Normandie. 

The tables were adorned with cornstalks sprayed with gilt paint to resemble huge candelabras, and the unadorned walls were bathed in a bright, Carribbean blue. “Man, was that spectacular,” Miller said. “It was out of this world.”

But Griffith’s finest work might be a private one – his roughly 30 lily ponds. He and O’Brien have built the ponds themselves during the past 25 years and many of the colorful lilies are Griffith’s own. There are hardy lilies (which overwinter in the ponds) such as “Lemon Chiffon,” which is light yellow, and “Rachel Hunt,” which is very large and white. The tropical lilies, which must spend the winter in greenhouses, include the blue-purple ones he has named “Blue Skys” and “Elsie” (as in his friend Elsie Hillman, the Pittsburgh philanthropist). Griffith’s peach-colored lily, created about a decade ago, is named “Tom O’Brien.”

Some of those same flowers will be blooming at his alma mater. He has donated about 100 of his plants to The Arboretum at Penn State, which has a 30-foot lotus pond in the H.O. Smith Botanic Gardens. Among those are water lilies that he has developed (they are unnamed for now) and another division of the rare lotus from Manchuria.

Those are varieties that have taken decades to hybridize, but Griffith thinks in terms not of time, but of beauty. “It’s joyful and it’s a love,” he said. “You just hope for the excitement of crossing two plants to come up with a wonderment.”

         There are a collection of great reads on Ken Landon’s superhero history available, I can at this time only repeat some of the vast number of articles collected from Water Gardeners International, Darren Bayhi’s info on the Austin Pond Society, and a collection of posts including the International Waterlily and Water Garden Society.

         Ken’s international waterlily collection in San Angelo has provided Egypt with seeds to repopulate the Nile River with  the thought to be extinct, Sacred Lotus of the Nile. Mexico thought the Star of Mexico had become extinct in the 1070s, Ken traveled to an uncharted area and found the plant and saved it from extinction. In Madagascar Ken discovered a tropical dwarf lily, Nymphaea minuta,which does surprisingly well in shade. Ken’s collection includes what possibly  the last, or one of the last Zanzibar’s, now extinct in the wild. This is just a touch of what Ken has done and if you would like to know more please search for him on the detailed history in the online sites I mentioned. Next year Ken and hopefully a large collection of the worlds aquatic hero’s will gather for the most extensive celebration ever of the waterlily. Just this Week Ken received news of a unanimous city council approval for a 10 year extended contract on maintaining and improving the park. LilyFest, or LandonFest as you could call it will be celebrated in conjunction with the IWGS symposium in Sept 2010. Visit the IWGS.org site for updates and details. At lily fest you will be able to meet Ken Landon in person as well as the staff and volunteers that help maintain the pools. Ken has quite a worldwide following and one of the best reputations as an international plant ambassador.

     Just one of a couple aquatic plants in the news of recent is a report from India that nymphaea Tetragona is becoming increasingly harder to find in the native pools in India.

    There are now a few tetragona waterlily varieties, a dwarf small white in most circumstances. It is unlikely the native India type is the tetragona found in your back yard or commercially.

   Leading botanist Pramod Tandon said that efforts to save Nymphaea tetragona, found only in a small private pond in India, have not been effective. Now these plants are only surviving on a small piece of private land in the north-eastern state of Meghalaya.

With less than 30 plants Professor Tandon fears the species may soon no longer exist in India. The professor is trying to save the remaining plants and finds it more important than cultivating them. They have used common methods to cultivate more of the plants from micro-propagation to seeds which have led to fewer than normal successful transplants.

The BBC article can be found here. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8269273.stm 

BIO: “Professor Dr. Pramod Tandon, a graduate of Lucknow University, did his Ph.D. from Jodhpur University in 1976. He joined as a Lecturer in the Department of Botany at North-Eastern Hill University in August 1977. In 1988 he became a Professor of Plant Physiology in the Department.

On a National Scholarship for Study Abroad of Government of India, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the University of California, Irvine USA during 1979-80. During 1989 to 1995 he was associated in collaborative research with several Universities and National Institute of Agrobiological Resources in Japan leading to a long-term collaboration on Plant Conservation Biotechnology

Prof. Tandon’s group has made significant contribution in mass micropropagation, reestablishment and conservation of Indian endemics from northeastern region, namely Nepenthes khasiana (a unique Indian insectivorous plant), Coptis teeta, Nymphaea tetragonoloba, Ilex khasiana and several orchids. Besides developing protocols for rapid propagation of some forest trees, the group has developed an embryogenic system for afforestation of Pinus kesiya. The findings on PCR based molecular characterization of rare and endangered plants have lead to the understanding of their rarity in nature and help in developing conservation strategies. He has developed an improved cryoprotectant for vitrification of cells that has wide applicability for cryopreservation of plant germplasm. Great innovation was shown in utilizing the solutions similar to ones used for vitrification for incorporation of high molecular weight substances into the permeabilized plant cells. His post-doctoral work relates to changes in mRNA transcripts in chloroplast DNA of higher plants during their evolution.” See “full text”