The lotus blossoms in Echo Park are in full-on bloom mode right now, and experts are saying it might be the most impressive blossoming in years.
This is early in the season for the lotuses to be opening up, let alone reaching superbloom status. Typically, only the first few flowers are peaking out around this time, continuing to open up through later June and culminating around the time of the annual Lotus Festival in mid-July.
Lush blossoms aren’t an accident—it’s taken around a decade of work by the city to bring the Echo Park Lake lotus garden back from the brink. The plants suffered a mysterious die-off in the mid-2000s, after which a team of landscape architects and arborists came in to restore the plants. Now, the underwater stems of the lotuses are protected with an underwater netting system which allows them to continue to grow year after year.
While the blossoms are already looking great, the peak of the bloom is still ahead of us. We just need a stretch of hot, sunny days when the June Gloom fully burns off.
“They don’t really do their thing until it gets warmer than it is now,” former L.A. Planning Department arborist Michael O’Brien told LA Weekly.
Luckily, just that type of warm, sunny weather does seem to be in the forecast soon, so we’ll be planning our picnics by the lake to take in one of the most beautiful floral displays in the city.
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