Looking For Lilies In Lotus Land

Thailand is a land of flowers. This was evident from the moment our flower-decorated tour bus drove away from the airport. All along the highway leading into Bangkok there were masses of red and yellow canna lilies lining the roadway interspersed with large stone pots filled with water lilies.

The traffic may have resembled I-95 during rush hour but the setting was definitely Thai. On side streets both in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, lotus filled every waterway. They are also grown commercially for cut flowers and food (the seeds and tubers are used), and the buds are given as an offering to Buddha in the temples. The lotus is considered a holy flower because it symbolizes our struggle in the world. It rises from the mud, grows toward the light and finally opens its petals to reveal its beauty.

As members of the International Water Garden Society (IWGS), it had been the dream of many of us to someday travel to Thailand where so many of our water lilies come from. In the summer of 2006, when our annual symposium was held in Florida, a group from Thailand attended and, during a visit to McKee Botanical Garden, it was decided to make Thailand the site of our meeting the next year. So in mid-July 2007, 28 of us from the United States joined IWGS members from Australia, China, England, Ireland, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and South Africa for a few days of pre-symposium sightseeing in Chiang Mai, 435 miles northwest of Bangkok.

Read the entire article in the January 2008 issue