"*muffin*"
I read this *wonderful* idea of how to plant lilies...
it said use a basket (like a clothes one with holes) line it with burlap,, &
plant the lily... it said it would give more 'air' to the roots & soil, so
you wouldn't get that yucky black smelly planting mix..

Muffin,
I took the lily you sent me and had it planted (it was so big, and my
being new at this, I wasn't sure how to handle it), anyway the pro's
pottted it into a regular 5 gallon black landscape pot with bottom
holes. They put 4 layers of newspaper over bottom holes and used a
potting mixture made of 1/2 plain bagged top soil & 1/2 half builders
sand. (He said by the time the paper breaks down the roots will hold
the mix from going out of the small holes). Put a small layer of this
mix in bottom of pot and added the fert pellets near the bottom
covered with some more soil mix and planted the lily. On top they
added a 1/2" layer of sand to keep soil mix in the pot. No stones,
because it makes adding additional fert pellets very difficult later
on. this seems to work beautifly as they have huge terrific lilies in
there demo ponds. As to the mix if you have dirt you could mix it 1/2
with sand. Here we have all sand so we need to buy topsoil. I added
two criscross plastic coated wire handles to this pot for ease of
handling. Just another way to pot lilies, there are many that work.

BTW...I had potted all my lilies into dishpans with no bottom holes,
using Aqua soil, topped with stones. VERY EXPENSIVE, very heavy,
stones made it difficult to add fert pellets when refertlizing
(especially since I couldn't see down more than 6" in my pond, so I
couldn't see the pots). Also like you said it makes smelly mix. I
will be redoing all of mine with the above method next spring.

Sue W