Pearls of the pool

Waterlilies have inspired artists around the world for generations. Perhaps most famously, they were immortalised by French impressionist painter Claude Monet, who recorded the play of light as it danced on the water gardens at his home in Giverny. It’s very easy to understand the obsession: the combination of sunset-coloured blooms and glossy green lily pads floating on a twinkling pond is a beautiful sight.

Two people who understand this passion more than most are Kevin and Lisa Metelik. Together they run Austral Watergardens, a nursery specialising in water plants in Cowan, north of Sydney, on a hillside overlooking Muogamarra Nature Reserve, in Dharug Country. “Waterlilies are really special,” says Lisa.

We describe them as the pearls of the pool. They’re precious ornaments in the garden.

With 180-degree views of pristine bushland, Kevin and Lisa’s nursery is a watery wonderland of ponds, trickling fountains and oversized water bowls. Every water surface is decorated with aquatic species – waxen waterlilies and lotuses, heart-shaped glossy leaves, strappy plants and grasses – within a layered garden of box hedging, palms, frangipanis and bamboo. “Water in the garden is such a soothing element,” says Kevin. “It’s a magnet for wildlife, such as dragonflies, little birds and frogs, and if you add a pump, it brings sound. It’s another dimension of gardening.”

Kevin and Lisa are the third generation to run the family-owned enterprise. It was started by Kevin’s grandfather, William, who bought the 2.8ha property in 1942, building concrete ponds to display his collections. The passion was then handed down to Kevin’s mother, Edith, who worked alongside her father tending to the lily ponds and learning all she could about growing aquatic beauties. Edith, in turn, shared her fascination with Kevin. “As a young bloke, I’d watch Mum care for these plants and started taking an interest in them,” says Kevin, who then began running the nursery with his mum. He and Lisa were both 22 when they married, and Lisa absorbed the obsession, learning alongside her mother-in-law. “Edith was a quietly spoken lady but she had such a passion for water plants,” Lisa says. “She instilled that wonder and fascination in us.”

The Meteliks have a vast sea of plants in their collections, but the waterlilies (Nymphaea spp.) are the stars of the show. They include both tropical and hardy varieties. The tropical varieties are frost-sensitive but flower prolifically, producing fragrant, pointy-petalled flowers on straight stalks that rise out of the water. The hardy waterlilies are temperate-climate varieties – “the Monet-style waterlilies” – with bowl-shaped flowers that usually float on the water’s surface. “We’re lucky we can grow both,” says Kevin. “The tropicals don’t tolerate frost so they’re not popular in Europe.” The beauty of growing both varieties is that it gives the Meteliks a longer flowering season.

The hardy varieties form their leaves in September, and flower from mid-October to the end of April. “They flower intermittently over those months. They have a big flush of flowers, then rest, building up to another big flush,” says Lisa. “Each flower lasts four to five days, and they close at night.”

When the hardy varieties finish blooming, the tropicals continue flowering for several more weeks. “The tropicals don’t come into growth until late October to November, and they start as a tiny little leaf,” says Kevin. “They flower mid-to late November, with a continual procession of flowers over a six- to seven month period. It’s like they don’t know how to stop flowering.” Cold weather is the only thing that stops them. “By June, they’ve lost all their leaves and they’re gone.”

The perfume of the tropical flowers is “intoxicating”, says Kevin. Among his favourites are ‘Blue Triumph’ (large, sky-blue flowers), ‘Empress’ (deep purple, semi-double), ‘Director George T. Moore’ (deep purple), ‘Tina’ (deep purple), ‘Green Smoke’ (bluey-purple with a lemon centre) and ‘Albert Greenberg’ (pinky apricot). Of the hardy varieties, Kevin’s favourite is ‘Amabilis’ (soft pink with pointed petals). Lisa likes the pink and crimson ones, such as ‘Fabiola’, ‘Darwin’ and ‘Escarboucle’. “There’s also a beautiful crisp white one, ‘Marliacea Albida’, which has perfect apple-green leaves.”

Other jewels in the Meteliks’ collections include the showy water lotus (“they flower for eight weeks and are absolutely spectacular,” says Lisa), Louisiana iris (“a great plant – it keeps its leaves through the winter and is the first to flower”), plus a range of native rushes and flowering aquatic plants. The collections grow in stock ponds, which include some of the original old concrete structures built by Kevin’s grandfather.

While it looks lush and idyllic now, the Meteliks’ property has faced its challenges. In 2002, after five years of drought, it was decimated by bushfire, and the Meteliks lost their home. “A lot of the stock ponds were big oval plastic containers, which melted. Everything was reduced to ash,” says Lisa. But the plants proved to be very resilient. “A few days after the fires, we saw little green shoots coming out of the ash,” says Kevin. “We had to put them in buckets and wait for them to grow before we could identify them. It was 12 to 18 months before we were on our feet again”.

Kevin and Lisa are as resilient as their charges, weathering the seasons and plant trends. “The nursery is a lot of work, but 99 per cent of the time, we love it,” says Lisa. “It’s like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge here – it never ends. Because it’s an old nursery, you always have something to do.”

They still find themselves in awe of their plants, and they eagerly await the annual bursts of colour. “We wait out the winter months, and then we hit flowering season and see the fruits of our work,” says Lisa. “They reward us with their beauty. To this day, we get entranced by them. We’re still learning things and finding little surprises – like discovering a throwback lily that’s two colours. It’s very rare, but it happens.”

Kevin and Lisa are thrilled to be sharing their watery world with two more generations. Their son, Daniel, works with them a couple of days a week and has started making large, lightweight concrete water bowls on-site. And their two daughters, Claire and Abby, and three grandsons are regular visitors, too. “It’s a wonderland for the kids,” says Kevin.

Header photo by Brent Wilson