It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them. Claude Monet
When the February winds blow cold it usually takes something very special to persuade us to leave the comforts of home on a mid-winter’s night. Recently we ventured out to take in the latest show by the Little Theater of Manchester, a production of Ken Ludwig’s The Games Afoot. Written in 2012, this play takes place in December, 1936 in the Hadlyme castle home of William Gillette which he called the Seventh Sister. Gillette was an actor who is best remembered for his portrayal of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. In fact, it was Gillette who gave us the images that we most associate with that character, namely the deerstalker cap and the curved pipe. The Games Afoot is a lively farce that centers around a fictional event in what we now know as Gillette Castle and makes use of many of the inventions and innovations that Gillette introduced during construction. Among these are the 3-mile-long narrow-gauge railway, secret passages, and 47 doors, of which no two are alike.
Seeing the interior of the castle represented on stage brought back memories of visits that we have made to the state park. One in particular involved a visit with our children in the late 1990s where we picnicked by the beautiful goldfish pond which was also home to lovely water lilies. Water lilies never fail to catch my attention. Those solitary blooms inexplicably floating on or rising above the water’s surface seem to belong to a world that is populated by fairies or talking frogs.
Water lilies bear a strong resemblance to their distant cousin the lotus plant. In fact, many water lilies bear the moniker ‘lotus’ in their common names while also to paying tribute to their possible original habitat in Ancient Egypt. Nymphaea caerulea, below, is known primarily as blue lotus but also as blue Egyptian lotus, blue water lily, blue Egyptian water lily, and sacred blue lily. Water lily, in the family Nymphaeaceae, and lotus, in the family Nelumbonaceae, are in the clade Angiosperms but diverge from there.
Water lilies are aquatic plants that have large tubers that will be well-rooted in lake or pond bottoms and large floating leaves and blossoms. They are attractive and desirable plants but they can crowd coves, ponds, and other areas making access very difficult. Mechanical control should involve digging out the roots, since simple cutting of the stems will not have an effect on the future growth of the plant.
Lotus plants grow much taller than their water lily cousins, up to 4’ high, so that they can overpower small ponds. The leaves can grow up to 24” across! In the image below you can see how they can dwarf observers.
Lotus is considered very important to some Eastern religions as they are held to have mystical powers. The interesting seed pods of Nelumbo species look like botanical shower heads.
Water lilies and lotus each have a species that is native to North America, the Mexican water lily (Nymphaea mexicana), and the American lotus (Nelumbo lutea) which is also native to the Caribbean. Unfortunately, the American lotus, the top two images below is listed as invasive in Connecticut by the Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group (CIPWG) along with the Yellow floating heart water lily, Nymphoides peltata, the bottom two images below. They are prohibited from importation, movement, sale, purchase, transplanting, cultivation and distribution under Connecticut General Statutes sections 22a-381d.
A better choice for Connecticut is Nymphaea odorata, the American white waterlily, pictured below. It is native to the northeastern United States but is also found from Central America to Canada, in Michigan and Minnesota and a few places in Washington and Idaho and can be weedy and invasive on North America’s west coast.
The best way to enjoy the perennial hardy (not tropical) varieties of water lilies is in a contained water garden, whether a man-made pond or in 15-20-gallon containers on a deck or patio, anywhere that they will be in full sun. The tubers of water lily should be planted in pots filled with standard garden soil and then covered with a layer of pebbles to keep the soil from floating away. The pots can rest on the bottom beneath a shallow water surface that is at least 6-10” deep but it should be 10-18” above the pot level if the plants are expected to overwinter on site. They send up their growth, first as stems and then the broad, flat, rounded pads and blossoms. They can bloom every 7-10 days from spring to fall, going dormant in the winter. Water lilies do not require circulating or moving water so there is no need for electrical wiring.
There are beautiful water lily ponds to be seen all over in addition to the grounds of the Gillette Castle. I pass a privately-owned pond en route to work that never fails to brighten my day when the water lilies are in bloom. The Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut, the final resting place for my grandfather, boasts some of the loveliest landscaping in Hartford, including a Lake Llyn Mawr which often has water lilies on it. Visitors are welcome year-round to respectfully enjoy the beautiful grounds shown below through hiking, jogging, bird-watching, painting, and photography.
On Long Island, the Old Westbury Gardens in Westbury, NY is worth a look if you are in the area. The former mansion home of the Phipps family, Westbury House is on the National register of Historic Places and sits amid 200 acres of gardens, woodlands, ponds, and lakes. You can tour the elegant 1906 Charles II-style mansion if you enjoy English antiques and decorative arts but for me the real beauty is outdoors. Among the many delights of the formal gardens is the Lotus pond that has both Nelumbo and Nymphaea species surrounded by walkway bridges, statuary, and structures.
The Connecticut Flower and Garden Show is a great place to see water lilies growing during the dead of winter when there is nothing in bloom out of doors. Seeing the many landscaped displays might inspire even the humblest gardener among us to try a water lily pond of our own.
Susan Pelton
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