Water Lilies

Early on a still summer morning, a water lily bud lies flat on the pond like a closed fist. Then the sun reaches it, the sepals peel back, and by mid-morning there is a flower sitting on the water as if somebody with a steady hand had placed it there. It does the same thing for three or four days, then slips below the surface and the next bud takes its turn.

Water lilies have a reputation for being fussy and faintly grand, plants for château moats and Victorian glasshouses. Most of them are nothing of the kind. Give a hardy lily sun, still water, heavy soil and the right depth and it will flower summer after summer with very little fuss. Get one of those wrong and it sulks, usually by producing leaves and nothing else.

This book shows you how to get all four right. It covers hardy and tropical water lilies, day and night bloomers, and lotus, which looks like a water lily but is a different plant with different appetites. It takes you from choosing a lily that suits your pond or tub, through planting, the summer routine, dividing and winter care, to more than forty profiles of named lilies and lotus, with plenty of history along the way.

What you’ll find inside

• How to match a lily to your pond by size, depth and sunlight, with tables for surface cover and how many plants to buy
• Growing dwarf lilies in tubs, sinks, barrels and glazed pots, including container ponds for a patio or balcony
• Baskets, soil and rhizomes: which way up, how deep to start and how to lower a young plant in stages
• Feeding, deadheading, keeping algae down without changing the water, and the reasons a lily refuses to flower
• Dividing, repotting and propagating, from root-bud cuttings to tropical plantlets and lotus from seed
• Three ways to handle tropical lilies where summers are cool, and how to bring lotus through the winter
• Water lily beetle, aphids, brown china-mark moth, leaf spot and crown rot, all dealt with without pesticides
• Marginals, oxygenators and floating plants that keep the pond clear, plus a planting plan for a small pond
• Latour-Marliac, Monet’s pond at Giverny, Kew’s Waterlily House and Paxton’s giant Victoria at Chatsworth
• A month-by-month calendar written to work wherever you garden, troubleshooting tables and a glossary

Who it’s for

If you have never grown a water lily, the opening chapters explain what you are buying and what it needs before you spend a penny. If you already have a pond full of leaves and a worrying shortage of flowers, the chapters on siting, depth and feeding should help you work out why. Experienced growers will find the cultivar profiles useful, with RHS size bands, depths over the crown and hardiness ratings, along with honest notes on naming muddles and on where good growers disagree.

A hardy water lily is not a plant for one summer. Choose it carefully, plant it well, and it will do most of the work for years to come.