How to Grow Water Lilies At Home
Water Lilies Are Gorgeous
The Tropical Grower is showing off our lovely Water Lilies this week with How to Grow Water Lilies At Home. No lie, I longed for Water Lilies. They are one of my absolute favorites. And you would think in a Tropical Zone, it would have been a given, we have a fountain. But no, despite pitching them to My Mom since the fountain’s installation.
Part of the problem was the perception that Water Lilies would be difficult to maintain. Our fountain is finished, brick and concrete. And despite having a stupid tree limb that grew over it and dropped leaves mercilessly down into the water, it was designed to have a clean bottom. Dirt and additional vegetation was not in her plan.
Surprise Encounter
My perception about growing Water Lilies completely changed when I visited the Denver Botanic Garden in Denver, CO with My Sister a number of years ago. If you ever get a chance to go before the weather changes cold, I highly recommend it, especially if you like Water Lilies. They have an abundance, and they are magnificent. They’re also in clean cement ponds.
While taking a ridiculous number of photos, because I couldn’t help myself, I paid very close attention to how they did it. They grow them in cloth pots, confining the soil. My grower research brain went crazy, and I added Water Lilies almost immediately when I took over Our Garden. The Perks.
Tropical & Hearty Water Lilies
If you want to grow Water Lilies, you almost certainly can, no matter your Zone. Woo-Hoo! You just need some standing water. Well, there’s that. While they come in both Hearty and Tropical varieties, don’t let that stop you, both grow just about anywhere in warm weather. And, if you can keep them from freezing, they generally come back year after year because they’re Rhizomes and Bulbs.
While we can grow either variety easily, here in our Zone 10a, we only grow the Hearty Water Lilies in Our Garden, the Nymphaea King Blue and the Yellow. It’s simple. The Tropical varieties go dormant and lose all their leaves below 55 degrees. While we don’t get many days where the water temp would drop that low, the Hearty varieties don’t go dormant unless dried. We have leaves and flowers all year. The magic of Growing Tropical.
Bulbs & Rhizomes
Hearty Water Lilies are Rhizomes. Rhizomes, which I like to call rootballs, are a combo of underground roots and stems. Water Lily Rhizomes usually look like a hard, brown, slightly dried-out carrot. They get longer and thicker with age. Look for the little nubs on the end if you don’t see baby stems and/or leaves. These are the pre-baby stems, or hope. Rhizomes will go dormant when dried out and are often sold as dry-root for planting.
Hearty Water Lilies grow in Zones 3-11, and as long as they are planted below the frost line and don’t freeze, will come back year after year. If your pond or water feature is going to have a hard freeze, pull them out and winter them in the shed or garage for safety.
Tropical Water Lilies are Bulbs. Everything a plant needs to grow condensed into a fleshy roundish root. Besides going dormant in chilly waters, they are one of the few tropical bulbs that actually try to grow deep into the ground and thrive in over 2 feet of water. Most Tropical Bulbs (even ones not supposed to grow in the tropical zones) float on top of the soil. They do this to escape the wet soil. Water Lilies prefer a layer of nice thick muck. The pleasant side effect is these usually come back every year in Zones 8-10 as long as the bulb never freezes deep in the soil. If it’s going to freeze, dig it up and store it.
Unmistakable Round Leaves
The round leaves with a single notch, float on top of the water, and they’re the distinctly calm soothing shapes of Monet. The painter. Ours have a slight dark green-purplish or brown variegation with a purplish underleaf. Each leaf stem reaches from the Rhizome under the water to the surface where the leaf grows both big and out.
The leaves grow much the same as most Rhizomes with new leaves emerging from a center stem area and growing out as newer leaves form. The difference is these float away from the center instead of being suspended in the air. Any heavy waves or surface water disturbance can tangle them all up, like if a raccoon decides to hunt frogs one night. You can straighten or leave tangled, it makes little difference to the plant as long as they are not getting so tangled they snap off the head of the leaf.
Flowers
Absolutely. As soon as the sun hits the water, the Water Lily Blooms open to meet it. We can get a shot of the purple joy almost anytime there’s sun with very few flowerless days. Our Yellow variety is more finicky. It usually only blooms once or twice a year, but it’s absolutely worth the wait.
Water Lily Blooms come in almost any color with specialty growers creating new ones all the time. And I’m of the firm opinion, they’re one of the most beautiful flowers in Our Garden. Seriously, I see it almost every day and still am in awe. 3 layers of delicate petals opening in a perfect circle the size of a softball. Gorgeous. The water backdrop doesn’t hurt.
While these will survive in partial shade, you can say good-bye to the flowers. Both varieties need at least 6 hours of full sun before they really start to bloom.
Choose a Material Pot
The first thing I noticed in Denver was the soft pots. Yes, they have pots made out of material. What? My first attempt at growing in the fountain was the saved Pickerelweed which was planted in their own muck in hard pots. They floated. I couldn’t get them heavy enough, and they were always over on their sides.
We bought soft pots, aquatic soil and fertilizer tabs to start. Since your plants are going to grow to the size of your pots, you want to make sure you have the right size pots for your area. Look for a pot with an area instead of depth. Each plant will spread out about 3x the size of the pot before it starts dropping new plants outside the pot. If you’re planting in a dirt pond and want spread, great, but if you are in a cement fountain, you’ll want to plan your space with the right size pots.
Aquatic Soil
Fill each pot about half way with aquatic soil and mix-in a dose of fertilizer if you are using the granular kind. Remove about half of the soil to another container so you have about a quarter (¼) of the pot full. Lay your Rhizome on its side in the center. Hold the little stem side with your thumb and fore-finger while you empty the dirt you removed back in, over the Rhizome. Pull the stem just above the surface of the soil and pack everything around the Rhizome well. Insert the fertilizer tabs around the outside of the pot at this point if you are using tabs or sticks.
You should have enough dirt to completely cover the Rhizome, planted on a slight-slant with the little stem head section exposed. Rhizomes like to grow horizontally, on their sides. Don’t plant it straight down in the ground. It won’t like it and will try to grow out of the pot. Dang. You want it to stay in there. For more on planting Rhizomes, check out How to Grow Bulbs and Rhizomes.
Contain Your Soil
While I’m sure there are several products and methods out there to contain your soil, we do it the simple way. A layer of fresh clean sand directly over the surface of the soil, followed by a layer of rock, and we have had zero and I mean zero transfer. Now, that being said, if you drop the freshly made pots into your water dry, sand will float out.
You will need at least an inch of clean sand covering the entire inner surface of the pot. The more the better. It adds weight. We just used some from the yard that wasn’t filled with silts. The goal is to seal the lighter soil in the pot. The heavier sand is the barrier. Then, the final layer of rock to keep everything in place. You can use any rock, but you don’t want it so heavy the stems can’t grow through it. We make sure the stems sticking out are surrounded and not covered by the rock.
It is also important to leave empty space in the pot after everything is planted and layered. We leave at least 3 or 4 inches. You want the leaves and spent flowers falling into the pot. If there isn’t any room, everything will just fall out.
Sink Slowly In Stages
Once your pots are made, take care when placing them. Chunking them in the water will mess up all your hard work. Set the pots on the edge and fill them with water. It will drain through the material, but you want to wet everything and make sure it’s staying in place. Make adjustments if needed. Then, I like to refill before I float the pot, slowly leaking in any water that has drained out.
The slower you go, the less likely you are to disturb the soil. Or you can just throw it in and clean up the mess. Dealers choice. Cleaning the bottom of the fountain is much more work for me.
Much Less Maintenance Than Expected
Planted correctly, we occasionally remove dead leaves, and prune once a year. It was so much less maintenance than either My Mom or I envisioned. It’s always worse in your head. The work is about the same as any shrub, you just get wet working with them. Almost no weeding. Since we were already occasionally removing dead leaves as part of the overall fountain maintenance, it wasn’t particularly difficult for us to include. The Pickerelweed is so much more maintenance because it constantly produces many leaves that need to be removed.
Water Lily leaves are thick and tend to stick around for a bit, dying very very slowly. They also tend to fall into the pots along with the flower pods when they die. We don’t have to start cleaning them out until they’ve gone over the 3x mark. At that size, both the leaves and pods start hitting the bottom of the fountain. Dang. Luckily, it’s at the end of the rainy season when we do an overall trim and clean-up of most of the vegetation in Our Garden. Time to prune.
Yearly Clean, Prune & Fertilize
Clean
Once a year, we pull these out of the water, pots and all, of course. If you’re really lucky, the pot won’t be covered in muck, but highly unlikely. Besides everything falling into the water, floating down to cover the bottom, stuff grows. We use a natural enzyme to keep down the algae because we regularly host tadpoles that eat mosquito larvae. Yeah, there’s a whole system going on in there. Muck happens.
The good news is muck is super rich in nutrients. Ours feed the plants in the pots all year, but it does eventually need to be cleaned, usually at the end of the rainy season. We set our pots on the edge of the Bulb Garden and drain the inner muck directly into the Bulb Garden. You can also add to compost, but the bulbs love it. Make sure to remove all the dead leaves and muck from around the stem and the top of the rocks. If it’s really gooey, I’ll use the hose to spray it off.
If we’ve waited too long, there is a sort-of picking of the muck off the rocks, but usually you can run water over it and the muck just floats away. You do, however, have to scrub the outer pot and exposed inner pot. I just use the scrubby side of a sponge and rinse with the hose into the Bulb Garden. It’s all wet and comes right off. If you don’t have a Bulb Garden or a nearby bed, everything can go into compost, but it’s mostly water. You’ll have to rinse it into the compost pile.
Include with Fountain Maintenance
Since we have a whole fountain, I do it in stages. A couple of pots each morning until I’m done, including the Pickerelweed pots. Then, I pull everything out one morning and scrub the treated inside and pressure wash the outer bricks.
Now, I need to mention, for years, a big limb from the Hong Kong Orchid tree had grown over the fountain and was mercilessly dropping big leaves, flowers, and general debris directly into the water. When the tree fell in Hurricane Ian, the limb went as well. So, there was much less debris in the fountain this year. Woo-Hoo! I’m training the new ones to miss it. Maybe.
Storing for Winter
If you’re storing Water Lilies for the winter, now is the time, right after the clean when the weather is cooling. Trim off all the green and let the entire pot dry out. Store them in an area where they will not freeze. I’ve also known several growers who drain, clean, and add extra soil over the Rhizomes for insulation to natural ponds in areas where they won’t get a hard freeze below the waterline, but it is always risky leaving Water Lilies in the ground where they could freeze.
Prune & Fertilize
We do not need these to go dormant, but we do need them to stay cleanly in place. As such, they need a good clean-up and generally, although not always, a prune. It’s also the time we add fertilizer.
Because we have to be careful to keep them in the pots, we only use a slow-release tablet into the soil, not next to the roots. We never add fertilizers where it can dissolve into the water, although the decaying leaves and pods add natural fertilizers to everything. Because of this, we already have problems with algae, no need to promote more growth. You can also use a granular fertilizer, but you have to add it to the bottom of the pot, or mix thoroughly into the soil. We don’t want to replant ours every year.
Be Mindful of the Floating Leaves
Make sure to secure all the leaves together carefully before you pull the pot out of the water. Since they are used to being suspended in water, the leaves don’t normally support their own weight. You want to give them plenty of support both when lifting them out of the water and while they are out. If ours are going to be out for a while, like with fountain maintenance, I’ll fill the cart with water and let the leaves float in there.
Now, chances are, there are more than one stem embedded in the rocks at the end of the growing season. The questions you have to ask yourself is do I want additional plants and will the area support it. If yes to both, Eureka! Babies!
Removing Rhizomes & New Shoots
If no to either, yank the new Rhizomes. Carefully remove the rock from the area, pull back the sand, and yank the new Rhizome from the soil. If it or portions of it are still attached to the main Rhizome or root, snip at the new Rhizome growth. If it is a new shoot from your main Rhizome, trim at the base of the new shoot next to the Rhizome. Replant or compost.
If your main plant is too big, you can also trim the Rhizome. Trimming some of the end root will keep the size of your plant down, but Be Careful, hacking your main root can kill the plant. You want to make sure you have enough root section left to support your plant. Look for tentacle roots growing off the Rhizome. You want to make sure there are plenty of these on the section left next to the stem. Any trimming should be done as far away from the plant stem as possible.
Overgrowth
Yes, indeed, on occasion these grow large enough to drop pods on the bottom of the fountain and make whole new plants. You would think this would be a big mess, but interestingly enough, I prefer it to the algae. They make large vegetation masses with thick roots underneath. I simply grab the leaves as a mass and pull the whole thing out. Whoop. While they can be replanted, we usually send the whole thing to compost.
Keep the snippers handy, the main root is sometimes still attached to the main Rhizome in the pot. While the mass of roots are easily torn apart, the big roots will often hold on. You don’t want everything in your hands with nothing to snip that final big root. Everything will have to go back in the water while you go get something. Never good.
How to Grow Water Lilies at Home
If you dream of Water Lilies, you definitely should include them in your garden. Ours bring us countless days of joy. Especially if you already have a water feature, you’re already doing most of the work. The perks should be yours.
