DENVER — A series of popular TikTok and Instagram videos has helped turn a playful challenge into a global event. The “Waterlily Weigh-Off” now involves 48 public gardens, including Denver, across nine different countries.
Bok Tower Gardens in Florida won this year’s friendly competition, whose goal was to see how much weight a single waterlily leaf can hold, with a leaf that supported 183 pounds. Denver’s entry managed about 50 pounds, Assistant Manager of Learning Engagement at the Denver Botanic Gardens Vanessa Callahan said.
“It started as just trying to call out a few other gardens,” Callahan said. “Once it started getting views, especially on TikTok, it really took off, and other gardens jumped in really quickly after we posted our first video.”
The Denver Botanic Gardens TikTok videos have been a hit all summer, with some amassing hundreds of thousands of views.
Callahan, who appeared in the videos for the gardens, said the plants are remarkable not only for their size but for specialized qualities that help them survive and dominate in the water.
“When we look at the underside, we see a lot of cool adaptations,” she said. “These really gnarly spikes are very sharp and very painful. They will go through gloves and jeans and waders, if you run into them hard enough.”
The plants prefer the “warm bath water” of tropical climates, Callahan said, and thrive in heated ponds or indoor displays. Colorado’s outdoor ponds shorten the growing season, why helps explain why the southern gardens frequently produce larger lilies.
“Down in Florida, they have a much more amenable climate for these to grow naturally outside, and they can get enormous there,” Callahan said.
The competition has become a way for the Denver Botanic Gardens and other gardens from around the world to share creative content and draw visitors.
“A lot of institutions started jumping on once they saw how popular this was and how much fun we were having, and how much fun the public was having,” Callahan said. “They're coming up and saying, ‘Oh, we saw those. We want to come to the gardens because we saw your videos.’ That has been by far the best part of the competition.”
While the Denver Botanic Gardens will likely never win due to the colder Colorado climate, the competition isn’t going anywhere. Callahan is especially excited to see where the competition and the creative videos go in future years.
“I'm really proud of what we have been able to build out of this silly little idea we started,” she said. “They're just showing so much creativity, so much storytelling, so much like earnest about them, experiences and personality, and I'm having so much fun watching it.”
