We have started planting lilies in our pond. We have found some purple ones, some white ones, and some bluish ones. We got them from friends and from one of the nearby resort hotels. You can go to any hotel with a pond feature and talk to the gardeners. They have to thin out the ponds all the time and they just throw away the plants they pull out. You can see in the picture at the left that new roots grow out on the stems of the big leaves. Just cut off the big stem to separate it from the larger plant and put those roots down in your pot. Try to find a pot with a pretty big mouth as the tubers reproduce and grow sideways. Line the pot with plastic weed cloth to keep the dirt in and use dirt that has none of those little floaty white things in it (vermiculite?) like you find in potting soil. We used a mixture of sand, clay and composted manure. Wrap the edges of the weed cloth over the top around the plant and put gravel or small stones all over to hold the dirt in. You want the pot to be about 12 to 18 inches (the top of the pot) below the waterline. We used concrete blocks under the pot to bring it up to the right level. The leaves and flowers float up to the surface and the roots (hopefully) stay down in the pot. If your pond is small and shallow you can just put the roots down in the muck at the bottom of the pond. If you look closely at the photo of the purple lily you can just see the top edge of the pot and you can see some pots behind it that have smaller lilies that haven't grown up to the water surface yet. We are madly planting as many water plants as possible to reduce the amount of sun that penetrates the water because we have seen algae blooms before and would rather not have any in this pond.
Lilly roots
