2022 New Waterlily Competition Winners

2022 IWGS New Waterlily Competition

The 2022 International Water Gardening Society annual symposium, held at Naples Botanical Garden (NBG) in Naples, Florida marked the 25th anniversary of the New Waterlily Competition.  This was the fourth year Naples hosted the competition, with the plants grown under the expert care of their Aquatics Areas manager, Kathy Cahill. The first competition was held in 1997 at Denver Botanic Gardens and started a tradition that continues proudly to this day.   

As the 2022 IWGS Symposium and Competition were both held at NBG, symposium attendees were able to browse the entries in person and vote for a People’s Choice Award under the hot Florida sun. The announcement of the People’s Choice Award was with-held until now, to avoid revealing any of the names of the contestants prior to the official judging, and has been added to the selection of 2022 winners.

We received entries in each of the following 5 categories: Hardy, Tropical Day-Bloomer, Hardy Intersubgeneric, Tropical Intersubgeneric and Miniature.  The miniature category was established this year after much deliberation. The size characteristics for a miniature waterlily were determined with the help of a survey sent to the waterlily community via Facebook.  The agreed-upon size was: flowers no larger than 3″ / 7.5 cm, pads no larger than 5″ / 13 cm. This year we only received one entry in the miniature category and unfortunately, this entry grew considerably larger than the size established for a miniature. Because of this we are not able to present an award in this category this year, however we look forward to greater participation in future years.

The entries were evaluated by an international panel of judges on the quality of the flowers and foliage as well as the general impression and uniqueness of the plant. These evaluations were made based on grower’s notes and photos over the eight-week observation period at the NBG. Among the judges were professional waterlily growers from botanic gardens and plant nurseries, as well as hybridizers and experienced hobbyists.

2022 Judges, in alphabetical order:

• CuiWei Yu (Zhejiang Humanities Landscape Co Ltd, China)
• Danny Cox (Longwood Gardens, USA)
• Farley See (Moore Water Gardens, Canada)
• Jon Sander (Glenstone Museum, USA)
• Kathy Sassoon (Leuca Creek, Australia)
• Kelly Billing (Water Becomes a Garden, USA)
• Rich Sacher (USA)
• Sander Dekker (Netherlands)
• Steve Hampson (USA)
• Tomas Escribano (Spain)
• Vicki Mills Aber (Colorado Water Gardening Society, USA)
• Weerada Tanaakarapakin (Buafah Garden, Thailand)

THE WINNERS

Without further ado, here are the winners of the 2022 IWGS New Waterlily Competition:

2022 IWGS Best Overall New Waterlily and People’s Choice Award

Nymphaea ‘Star White’

By Somchan Treesuwan (Thailand)

2022 IWGS Best New Hardy Waterlily

2022 IWGS Best New Tropical Day Blooming Waterlily

 

2022 IWGS Best New Hardy Intersubgeneric (ISG) Waterlily

2022 Best New Tropical Intersubgeneric (ISG) Waterlily

 

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We would like to thank all the hybridizers for offering their creations for evaluation and offer our gratitude to the judges who volunteered their time to examine these hybrids and made many tough decisions. Our thanks also goes out to those who made donations to the IWGS in support of the Competition. Not least of all, we wish to extend our gratitude to Naples Botanical Garden for hosting this year’s competition as well as the IWGS symposium.  Most notably, we would like to extend our thanks to Kathy Cahill for growing and documenting this year’s competition and Isabel Soto for all her help before, during and after the symposium.