Thousands Of People Lined Up to See Lotuses And Water Lilies Bloom Together in a Magical Garden Setting
Published Aug. 1 2025, 11:45 a.m. ET
People flock to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens to witness the blooming lotuses and water lilies.
In 1951, a Japanese botanist named Ichiro Ohga visited a dry lake bed in Southern Manchuria and collected some lotus seeds. From his collection, he passed on three of these seeds to a University of California paleobotanist, Ralph Chaney, who germinated them in Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. Today, inside the sprawling 700-acre stretch of the national park, meditating in a display pond is a lotus that blossomed from these ancient seeds. Clustered within dew-drippy green leaves, the lotus gazes at the sky. Tucked at the center of its pink-petalled cup, a canary yellow notch basks in the sunlight along with turtles and leaves that are pulsating in the lake waters. This is just one of the flowers visitors recently witnessed at the Lotus & Waterlily Festival at the park.
Pink water lily (nenuphar) being reflected on clear water.