Water Lilies and Sacred Lotuses of NY Botanical Garden

Saturday, August 17, we went to NY Botanical Garden. It's funny that we have been living in NY or close to NY (about 15 minutes drive) for the last fifteen years, and this was the first time we went there. The Botanical Garden occupies an area of about 250 acres with more than one million living plants. It was modeled after London's Royal Botanical Garden, and is considered one of the world's premiere plant research facility. It's Mertz Library is considered America's largest botanical library and houses manuscripts which are 800 years or older. It has plants not only from every corner of the US but also from the world. The giant Redwood Sequoia can be seen, outside of California, only in the grounds of NYBG. It has a rose garden with more than 650 varieties of roses and more than 6000 plants. Beside rose gardens, it has every possible garden-type one can imagine -- old-growth forest, swamp, meadow, prairie, vegetable, children's, home gardens, gardens appealing to senses and what not!! Those of my readers who are from the US might know about the famous Cherry blossoms that happens every spring in Washington DC -- they are famous because they were gift from Japan to the US as symbol of peace and relation between the two countries. However, similar row of cherry blossoms also happens in NYBG (now I don't have to go to DC to see those blossoms :-D)

. How come my garden can't look like this??

We went there for the exhibition "Wild Medicine -- Healing Plants Around that Plant" that's going on there until September 8. So, we only visited Enid A. Haupt Conservatory which are housing all these medicinal plants and the outside area around it. We covered not even 0.1% of the garden. So, without much adieu, I present today only some of the many blooms that we saw in that small area. Today I start with the water lilies and lotus. I am sorry, dear readers, to spoil the pictures with copyright notice across them. I have to take such measures because my site gets hacked and I receive too many spams. Are you fascinated by these colors and flowers? I wish you could see them with your own eyes -- two huge pond completely covered with all these beautiful, exotic looking flowers. It was a sight to behold. Now, I can understand why lotus are considered in both Hinduism and Buddhism as the flowers on which Gods/Goddesses sleep and sit. They are indeed too beautiful to be part of this mundane world; really belongs to some heavenly universe

Water lilies are known as Nymphaea and Lotus are known as Nelumbo. Lotus are considered as extremely sacred flowers in India and it's the flower of the country. Lotus are sacred to both Hinduism and Buddhism. There are two types of water lilies -- hardy and tropical. Hardy ones will survive the winter of NY/NJ if they are planted below the freezing line in a water feature. Tropical water lilies either need to be treated as annuals or need to be stored over winter. Lotus will be hardy if the rhizomes of the plant do not freeze. Plant the container with the rhizome so that it is below the freezing line in your pool.