Planting a rainbow: Meet Kerala’s globally recognised water lily hybridiser
Viji Abi’s creation has been accepted as a new cultivar by the International Waterlily and Water Gardening Society. I faced numerous failures first, she says.
She calls it her tranquil obsession. It crept up on her when she wasn’t looking, and is taking her in new directions, opening her up to new worlds.
Viji Abi, 34, began breeding water lilies in 2018. She had just given up her career as an accountant to care for her two children (Abron and Abria, now 9 and 7).
Five years on, one of her cultivars has received global recognition from a jury of her peers.
Nymphaea Sree, a tropical day-blooming plant that she created via cross-breeding, sprouts 52-petalled flowers in a deep pink, with an orange base. It was accepted as a new cultivar by the International Waterlily and Water Gardening Society (IWGS), in October. “Being called a hybridiser is a huge thing for me. I wasn’t even expecting that my entry would meet the criteria,” Viji says.
IWGS is a non-profit organisation that registers new varieties, based on formalised submissions by members. The body lists about 50 new cultivars a year, says its head Kathy Jentz, who is also editor and publisher of Washington Gardener Magazine and editor of the quarterly IWGS Water Garden Journal, where listings of new cultivars are published.
Viji had dreamed of featuring in this journal, and after years of effort, she says, “I made it there”.
She first began growing water lilies in the garden of her family’s home in Thrissur, Kerala, because they were so beautiful to wake up to. She became interested in the seemingly infinite varieties, and started to research different breeds online. Meanwhile, she began selling tubers from her garden, online, for sums ranging from ₹1,200 to ₹1,500.
The more she read up on water lilies, the punier those sums looked.
“I stumbled upon Australian Victoria water lilies being sold in India for ₹12,000,” she says. “I was taken aback, questioning the reasoning of people who would invest such sums in this manner.”
The Victoria, she soon learnt, could be easily crossbred. It was huge, hardy and resilient (its flat leaves grow up to 3 metres wide on the surface of water), adaptable to various environments. Crossbred, it could yield astonishingly vibrant blossoms.
She wanted to create a unique one, she decided, and so her crossbreeding adventures began, in 2020. “I faced numerous initial failures,” Viji says.
The climate in Kerala was too dramatic for some of the more delicate varieties. Then, each time she succeeded in creating a hybrid, she discovered that it had already been named and listed.
On a crisp day in late 2021, she stepped into her garden and knew she had a winner. She had never seen anything like the intricately layered pink and orange Nymphaea Sree (named after a friend).
She sent a photo to her mentor, Somnath Pal, a 39-year-old project manager turned aquatic gardener who runs a nursery in Badlapur, Thane district. The variety was certainly unusual, possibly unique, he said.
She submitted her application to IWGS, with details of the plant’s progeny, precise measurements, and colour data (based on the RHS colour chart used by horticulturists worldwide). And, nearly two years later, after extensive vetting, they confirmed that, in the eyes of IWGS, she had created a new cultivar.
In the world of Indian hybridisers, she is now something of a star. She can expect entreaties and enquiries via email, from strangers who admire her work. That is, in fact, how she first reached out to Pal, a celebrity himself, ever since he was named Hybridiser of the Month in the July 2017 issue of the Journal.
“He receives queries from around the world,” Viji says, clearly excited by the idea that she might too. Meanwhile, she has about 100 blossoms to care for, across her 2,400 sq m of land.
The excitement of sowing seeds and waiting in anticipation, giving it your best but having little control over the outcome, is a bit like taking a big exam, she says, laughing. “Except, it’s a source of immense joy to me.”
