Midway Water Gardens


We’ve contacted Dustin Machinsky, because we are a big fan of his wonderful hybrid, Nymphaea Pink Dawn. While mailing back and forth we were charmed by his passion for ponds and landscaping.

Dustin Machinsky: his life

Midway Water Gardens
© Midway Water Gardens

Dustin Machinksy was born in 1982 in La Grange, Texas. Ponds have always been a hobby of his since he was 6 years old.  If we would have been talking about chess or violin, we would call him a child prodigy for sure.
12 years later, on the 1st of  September 2001, just 18 years old, he started his own company.  To turn your hobby into your daily business at the age of 18 is rather impressive! He does almost all the work by himself, with just a little bit of help from his family.  Being a family business ourselves, we can only admire this way of working.
Nobody in his family was ever interested in ponds, his mom did have a glass house, but that was even before he was born. A self-made man for sure!

Dustin Machinsky: his waterlily

Nymphaea Pink Dawn
Nymphaea Pink Dawn

Of course we are primarily interested in his wonderful hybrid, the one and only Nymphaea Pink Dawn.  This hardy waterlily is a seedling from Nymphaea Arc-en-ciel.  Dustin already had this waterlily for 3 years before he sent it to the IWGS competition of 2011, luckily he did, or we might have never knew it existed.   He got the first place for best new hardy waterlily, in his first attempt ever.  Only 10 years after he started his company, quite remarkable.
It might had never come to that, because he almost lost this beautiful lady due to the draught.  Only one seedling survived, so he had to reproduce all his stock from this one seedling that was left, fortunately that went quite well.

 

Dustin Machinsky: his company

Midway Water Gardens
© Midway Water Gardens

Dustin Machinsky once had more than 200 varieties in his collection, but due to the dry spells in Texas, the past years, he lost a lot of them.  The ponds dried up totally and there was not enough water to fill them up.  He still has about 75 varieties left now.
“Hybridizing water lilies is more of a side hobby than a business  to me. My main business is  retail sales of water garden supplies and water feature and landscape design as well as  installation” .
We are very curious how his business will evolve in the future.

Our questions:

What is your favourite botanical garden?

I have not been to many botanical gardens and I have only been there once but I really enjoyed the water lily collection displayed at San Angelo Texas.

What waterlily would you like to add to your collection?

I don’t know if I have a specific variety that I would like to add, but I would like to get any of the newer varieties that are hard to get.

What kind of waterlily would you like to see in the future, would be the perfect one?

Well I don’t know if I will ever get the crosses to produce this, but I have been crossing other hardies with pink dawn hoping to get a different flower color, but to keep the white streaks in the petals or even better have the streaks come out some other color.