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Where: Civic League Park, San Angelo. Located on North Park Street between Harris and Beauregard avenues.

the International Waterlily Collection. Tour the collection and see the latest hybrids developed by horticulturist Ken Landon. When: 9 a.m.-noon

Sept. 16. Landon will lead a tour at 11 a.m.

Admission: Free. Info: (325) 657-4279 or SanAngeloTexas.org. PATRICK DOVE/SPECIAL TO THE EXPRESS-NEWS

ABOVE: A flower of ‘Ineta Ruth’ rises above a pond at the International Waterlily Collection. Ken Landon, who developed it, named the plant for his mother. LEFT: A bee hovers over a flower of Nymphaea ‘Blue Cloud.’

TRACY HOBSON LEHMANN/STAFF

to perpetuate the species. “His focus is to preserve . . . Nymphaea from all around the world, not just Texas, not just the South, not just the United States, but the entire world, which is a pretty awesome task,” says Paula Biles, executive director of the International Waterlily and Water Gardening Society based in Bradenton, Fla. From two seedlings of Nymphaea gigantea, a species native to Australia, Landon created ‘Blue Cloud,’ a lavender-blue flower. “We have it in the pool at Longwood,” Nutt says of the hybrid. “It’s our pride and joy.” Visitors to the West Texas park can see giganteas blooming in their entire color range — pink, blue and white. Often, garden guests from Australia have never seen a single variety of the plant in their homeland, Nutt says. Landon notes the park display represents only about 1 percent of his plant family, which he says is the largest collection of the genus Nymphaea in the world. He grows the plants in a greenhouse in Miles, about 20 miles north-

east of here and at gardens around the world. While this semiarid region, with an annual rainfall average of 18 inches, seems an improbable place to establish a worldclass water lily garden, Landon settled here to be near family. In 1988, he took over a pond built in the 1930s as a reflective pool in a Works Progress Administration project, and with the support of the local Council of Garden Clubs transformed the muddy mess into what is now the main pond. Five smaller ponds surround the center pool, and there’s room for one more that will be built as funding allows. Landon says he has turned down potentially lucrative offers to relocate the collection. He owns all the plants, and the city pays his salary as curator. Guests, with cameras clicking, wander the labyrinth of sidewalks among the pools. Some focus their lenses on the flowers. Others use the lilies as backdrops for family photos, capturing the next generation with the plants Landon has preserved for them. National Geographic pho-

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ing to the thriving plants and underscoring his defiant nature. “It took me two years to get ’em up, but they are up.” The plants, which he describes as temperamental, like 90-degree water and little movement in the water. Landon grew the tubers last year, overwintered them and then grew the plants this year. “To see this flower blooming here, to John Q. Public it doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “For a botanist or botanical enthusiast or water lily expert, it’s meaningful.” Nutt, who describes as “a pilgrimage” his visit to West Texas from the 1,000-acre garden in Pennsylvania created by Pierre duPont, says Landon “probably has one of the finest displays of water lilies in the world.” While he concentrates on creating hybrids, he also is intent on preserving the species. A decade ago, Landon founded the International Waterlily Preservation Repository, through which he collects specimens and shares seeds. When flooding on the Nile River threatened the sacred blue lily of the Nile (N. caerulea), Egyptian officials called Landon and came here to get 2 million seeds to restart the plant. Of the large order, Landon says, “It’s not hard to do because each seed pod has 60,000 to 70,000 seeds.” Landon treks to jungles and remote locales in search of rare specimens, and he relates stories of hopscotching across an alligator’s head (he thought it was a rock until its mouth opened) and other harrowing adventures to get his hands on seldom-seen aquatic plants. “The gene pool is going away,” he says of the genus that is threatened by flooding, swamp draining for development and encroaching populations in thirdworld countries. “They’re not worried about lilies, they’re worried about surviving,” he says. Efforts to wipe out invasive species such as water hyacinth sometimes wipe out noninvasive nymphaeas, and hybrids also take over established species. Landon worries that future generations won’t know the plants he knows. But he’s trying

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Water lily collection among the best

tographers have come calling to document rare species. And if this is an unlikely location for a world-class water garden, Landon is an unlikely gardener. Trained as an industrial engineer with a minor in botany, his love for water lilies began when he was a teen building a pond in Albuquerque, N.M. After a bit of searching, he found a retailer who ordered an aquatic plant for him. That plant died when the family moved to Fort Worth in the 1960s, but Landon’s mother spotted a newspaper story about a woman selling water lilies, and Landon began digging a pond. He overnighted his new plant in the garage before the pool was complete and was smitten by the sweet fragrance of the flower that greeted him the next morning. “I was hooked,” he recalls. Landon’s work has earned him a spot in the International Water Gardening Society Hall of Fame. That, however, isn’t what he views as his greatest claim to fame. Landon also finds time to indulge his passion for pyrotechnics. He received a call from the White House to supply strobe star fireworks for President Reagan’s second inauguration. Locals, in fact, know Landon as well for his annual Fourth of July fireworks display as for his water lilies. Giverny couldn’t say that for Monet.

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