Raising lilies in a deep pond

My pond is 1 meter deep, and I want to plant some lilies in it. There are no fish and it is sunny. It is fibreglass lined.

Can anyone think of a way to raise them up, without needing me to actually get into the pond?!!!! The makeshift temporary pedestal will need to be a couple of feet high I think.

I've tried to submerge a plastic container, but I can't get it to sink. Terracotta pots will be too expensive if they're large, and stacking many smaller ones will be very heavy and hence not easy to submerge.

 

I lowered broken paving slabs into my pond, and stacked them using strips of old fabric as slings. They have been in there a long time now and seem to be doing a good job. I also put an old chimney in one end to house a plant. For smaller plants I made floating planters out of old sheets of polystyrene packaging cut around the pots...they seem to work as well.

 

Large...5 litre, 10 litre....plastic pots with a heavy stone in them and then a large flat stone or slate or piece of wood as a support for your potted lily Howard. A concrete block or two will do the trick. Always make sure some leaves are able to float on the water surface.

 

The usual way is to plant the waterlilly in a basket and place pebbles on top of the soil. For large waterlillies a laundry basket works well.

 

True Redwing but they have to be planted high then lower into the pool as the lily stems grow.

 

If its a good size rhizome I think it will be ok put at a metre deep from the start, as long as it is one of the larger types of water lilly.
Lets face it, if the pond is a metre deep, and the pot is a foot high, the crown is only about 2 ft down.
Other wise if you put something under the plant you then have to get that out once the lilly is growing strong.

 

Yes I'm coming to this conclusion -- especially if I can buy large mature plants (which I can)

But how do I get them safely to the bottom of the pond? Is it a two man job?

 

Usually done with ropes, a bit like they do it in cemetaries
Yeah, better with two.

 

Well we had quite a job of it!! I was given a large Nymphaea Alba, the native one, by a friend. The root was about the size of a small beachball. We planted it in an old laundry basket. It was heavy as you can imagine. Next day after spending the night in the shallow parts of the pond this is what we did and it was worthy of a Buster Keaton film! Other half had made a coricle awhile ago so coricle at the ready, plus inflated inner tube, paddle, ropes and long stick OH paddles out to the deepest part of the pond. I'm at the side and push the laundry basket out a little.....OH manoevers it into position with the help of the inner tube and ropes. .....we nearly loose it and it starts to topple over and the coricle nearly topples over too but we catch it and eventually manage to lower it into place with the ropes and get it in almost the right place. Inflated inner tube was essential to stop everyting crashing down. A Buster Keaton film would have ended with us falling in but we didn't. Two weeks later and it looks beautiful! Picture below was taken the next day. Now it has lillies.